


The Mark of Cain

by whitesilverandmercury



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin
Genre: "gang violence", Art Theft, Bratva, Dark Material, Drug trafficking, F/M, Gen, Guns, Los Angeles, M/M, MOTHERLAND, Money laundering, Multi, Russia, armin being a badass, conny might be in trouble, criminal tattoos, implied death of nameless characters, latin kings, mikasa the yakuza princess, this is some real graceland bullshit okay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-02
Updated: 2014-08-11
Packaged: 2018-02-11 12:25:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 22,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2068104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whitesilverandmercury/pseuds/whitesilverandmercury
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One branch of Balkan heroin traffic moves up through Central Asia and from Russia to Western Europe, and from loyal followers in Western Europe to the USA. A large order of Matryoshka fakes is on its way to California just in time for Christmas. The pilot knows. The pilot is paid. The pilot wants his wife and children to be okay. // prison tattoo/gang au for vanillaoverlord, relocated from tumblr</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. the mark of cain.

**Author's Note:**

> this is a braided timeline. otherwise unmarked is the present in both time zones. there is "two days ago," and "one day ago." i’ve taken a few creative liberties regarding gang activity, pretrial detention center (SIZO) design, maybe a few other things here and there in the global criminal underworld. please don't kill me if i've gotten anything wrong. OH listen to dina vierny's "chants du goulag (don't wait for me mama)" while you read. it’s kind of the reason this turned out this way. maybe watch the documentary "the mark of cain," too. and blame graceland. and possibly a les mis fic i read. 
> 
> idk, look up the tattoos everyone has! i want to post a list and meanings but there are quite a lot... and this is just a one-shot. right? RIGHT oh god

**i.** **{st. petersburg, russia; 0700 hours MSK, two days ago}**

* * *

  _Не жди меня, мама, хорошего сына,  
А жди—мошенника, вора!_

* * *

 St. Petersburg since its birth has always been a cosmopolitan gem.

The “Venice of the North” they said, when Peter the Great took _Ingermanland_ back as the new capital and revolutionized the Motherland in ways that took the rest of Western Europe centuries. Or maybe the “city of three revolutions” is more recognizable now, as recognizable as the neoclassical and romantic architecture, the teeming, thriving, buzzing globalized microcosm here amongst the old cathedrals and government seats, French fashion stores and _Makdonalds_ , nightclubs and coffee shops clustered along the Neva.

Thanks to the Baltic Sea, the summers here are short and humid, the winters long, cold, wet.

Seabirds and rooks dive and swoop; the cool brumal sunrise scintillates off the bay. Along the skyline there swell golden domes and cupolas—one, two, three, four.

On the chests and sloping shoulder-blades of young owl-eyed men, the number of cupolas count years served in prison.

* * *

  _Don’t wait for me, Mama. Don’t expect the nice boy I used to be._

_Expect a scoundrel and a thief._

* * *

  **ii. {los angeles, california; 1900 hours PDT}**

Nanaba rakes a hand through her hair, legs dangling wide at the corner of the desk where she sits, clutching her sweating water bottle. Mike shakes his head, throwing down the telephone receiver; the desk is swarmed by them, in all shapes and sizes. This is the conference room of the DEA’s undercover location, just off Hauser and Wilshire.

“He’s out of his mind,” Nanaba seizes the silence, meaning their supervisor. She swings her legs nervously, still sticky with sweat at the naked shoulders peeking out of a sleeveless hoodie. The phone call interrupted her nightly workout.

“It’s _Pixis_ ,” Nile hisses in reminder. “What else did you expect?”

Mike is quiet, per usual. He shows no sign of joining the argument; his nose twitches, but it’s just an idle sniffle.

“The Latin Kings?” Nanaba stresses. “They don’t _have_ chapters in LA. Do they?”

“According to the tip-off, they do.”

“And there’s no connections between this and the white china ring in San Fran?”

Mike points a finger, smiling dryly. “White china in china dolls, left on doorsteps. _My_ case. Hands off.”

Nanaba swigs some water and shakes her head. “It’s all yours, hon. I’m just saying—”

Mike rises, clearing his throat. “Actually, there’s been a small chapter in LA for almost eight years now. At least, according to some CIs.” Mike stops at the door back into the rest of the house, glancing over his shoulder. “Apparently this ‘small chapter’ is about to get their hands on a massive amount of heroin, and we’ve got to intercede before that happens. Yeah?”

“But where’s the dope coming from?” Nanaba protests.

Mike shrugs. “We have to find out.”

* * *

_А если посяду в тюрьме за решетку,_  
 _В тюрьме я решетку прорву,_  
 _И пусть луна светит своим продажным светом._

_If they lock me in jail, I will break the bars  
and let the moon’s corrupted light shine._

* * *

**iii. {st. petersburg, russia; 0800 hours MSK, two days ago}**

Art is money. Interpol clocks art theft as an annual six- to eight-billion dollar industry, exceeded mainly by drug trafficking, arms dealing, and money laundering.

Two Degas, two Rembrandts, a Dürer and a Manet have been hanging for a quarter of a century in the red room of a renovated St. Petersburg estate which specializes in all four industries. 

The war on crime has turned from offshore banks to terror lately, after all, and the only detective who ever believed the biggest art heist of almost all time could be solved has recently died. The articles about his endeavors are brunch anecdotes; suicide bombers and religious extremists continue to distract the world from the very crime syndicates who basically fund them.

One branch of Balkan heroin traffic moves up through Central Asia and from Russia to Western Europe, and from loyal followers in Western Europe to the USA. A large order of Matryoshka fakes is on its way to California just in time for Christmas. The pilot knows. The pilot is paid. The pilot wants his wife and children to be okay.

The house is a sprawling demonstration of modern conveniences and old world charm, state-of-the-art amenities and wrought-iron eighteenth-century terraces laced with ivy. Historical documents testify some army general or another once owned the place. Now it is full of expensive leather furniture and heavy velvet drapes, widescreen televisions and coffered tracklit ceilings, stainless steel appliances, buffered hardwood, security encryptions on security codes.

In the red room there is a black walnut curio cabinet from which, at the punch of a few keypad buttons on the inside of the lower left door, narrow panels and secret drawers unlock, full of knives, ammunition, sleek firearms.

Lounging about in their pajamas on the suede sofa set, Hanji gives Eren a Mandala reading with ornate little Tarot cards.

“This card represents your life path and accomplishments,” she says in that beautiful burnt velvet voice of hers, eight o’clock in the morning and taking red wine with her breakfast. She taps the fourth card of the spread. “You got Death.”

“Is that bad?” Eren breathes, eyes jumping from the cards to Hanji. Her eyes are smoky from sleeping in her makeup; her thick waves of hair are tousled in morning fashion.

Hanji cackles if only to scare him. “No.” She cracks the joints in her toes with one hand, cradling her wine in the other. “Death symbolizes a change, a transition. Death is a good card.”

Through her gauzy nightshirt, he can see her nipples. He can see the sailing ship of the roaming life on her right forearm. He can see the rose tangled in barbed wire that drifts down her sternum, and the brilliant silver chain that carries her birthstone on her throat.

Petra interrupts them.

“I need my medical examiner!” she shrieks, throwing her hands in the air. She is dressed to the nines. She is in shining heels and a pencil skirt. A string of colorful words follows. “Remember? _Remember_? Erd is the lawyer, I am the sister, and—”

“Shit, that’s me!” Hanji cries. She leaves the Tarot spread and almost spills her wine, running off to become the medical examiner accompanying Erd the lawyer and Petra the sister to the pretrial detention center. The appointment is in thirty-three minutes. It will look bad to be late.

Eren prods at the abandoned Tarot cards. Petra stoops to give him a kiss, running her fingers through his hair. “What’s bothering you, baby?” she hums.

“Nothing,” he mumbles, crawling away from her and glancing once—not twice, only once—in the general direction of Erwin’s quarters. He fixes Petra with a cold glance, studying her loftily through his lashes. “Bring my Levi home,” he whispers, and passes Hanji with a kiss on the stairs as she stumbles into her proper coat and he drifts off to take a morning shower.

* * *

**iv. {los angeles, california; 2305 hours PDT}**

“Marco. Did you ever see that movie ‘Pulp Fiction?’”

“Yeah.”

“I’m living it, aren’t I?”

“Yeah, you are, baby.”

The Matryoshka dolls are laughing.

Marco isn’t laughing. Marco is undressing Jean with his eyes. Jean is curled up amongst pillows and blankets on a posh couch in a beachfront condo, all dark lashes and square chin, baseball tee riding up on his oblique and betraying kissable surfer skin. He is all man, he is half-blond and built like a Greek god, he is not wearing pants and he is waiting for Marco on the couch with the television on and the cocaine already in lines and he is _his_.

Marco smiles. He feels like a predator on the prowl, but he is known for his smile being kind. It’s something to take care of, at least. He is the baby-faced prince of his father’s West Coast chapter and his boyfriend is fiddling with the cut straw with an innocent sex kitten look on his face.

Like kids at a slumber party, they sit on pillows on either side of the coffee table. To the soundtrack of a live studio audience booing someone on cue, they follow the lines together. Marco reaches across the table and yanks the beanie off Jean’s ash blond hair; he runs his hands through the thick wavy locks like there is nothing finer, not silk, not steam, not gold filigree.

Jean’s hands tug and fist in Marco’s hair, playful reciprocated pawing. His hair is still damp from the shower. His skin is still sticky. Jean drops kisses down his chest and nips at the five-point crown between his pecs.

“ _Amor de rey_ ,” Jean bedroom-growls, voice vibrating in his throat like the drip on the back of Marco’s tongue, and the coke is pure and the coke is sharp and the Matryoshka dolls are laughing, singing, laughing, squealing, his mother is going to be so proud of him, so very, very proud of her baby boy.

“ _Te amo_ ,” Marco purrs back, and then his tongue is in Jean’s mouth and Jean is moaning, groaning, squirming beneath him, melting at his touch like ribbons of wax. Smells like incense in this condo; smells like dope and prayer candles and Burberry cologne.

“I want to go surfing in the moonlight!” Jean whines.

“I want you to fuck me until I scream,” Marco parries.

Jean fucks him like the man he is, and Marco is so in love. He wishes he’d turned around the few Matryoshka dolls on the island counter so they can’t watch him and his lover going at it like rabbits on the couch his mamá bought him. “I love your tight Puerto Rican ass, holy shit,” Jean hisses, slapping Marco’s rear right on the dimples. Marco covers his head with throw pillows instead and as a moan is shuddering through him, the orgasm is shuddering through him, the studio audience on the television sitcom cries, “ _Ahhhh!_ ” about something and Marco lets Jean come inside him.

* * *

**v. {los angeles, california; 2240 hours PDT}**

Nanaba washes the smell of vodka and cigarettes out of her hair. She brushes her teeth to clean the Russian off her tongue.

“They’re selling to the People,” she laments. “Ymir and Christa confirmed.”

The DEA will stage a buy from the Latin Kings. Mike has been cultivating bonds with the local pseudo-Corona for three years. The closing phrase will be, “Then we have a deal,” at which time Nile and the rest of the operation unit will swarm and take the gang down.

“Is that the T-shirt I bought you at Disneyland?” Mike mumbles from the kitchen, cracking open a Corona Light.

Nanaba peeks over the back of the couch, pulling her feet up off the floor and hugging her knees to her chest. Her hair is still dripping from the shower; she just wants to watch some TV before going to sleep.

“Yes,” she confesses. “It’s comfy.”

* * *

**vi. {undisclosed pretrial detention center, st. petersburg, russia; 0900 hours MSK, two days ago}**

“There’s TB in this place,” whimpers one of the junkies shaking in the corner, wasting away under the half-window that is nailed shut.

Levi shifts to switch which leg is crossed over the other, lighting a cigarette and waving out the match. “How nice,” he murmurs.

The air is stuffy. The air is stale. Mold and age crack the plaster. There is a stain in the ceiling from God knows what on the floor above. The conditions are poor; there are just too many of them to fit comfortably in cells. Ah, the broken government. There are four narrow cots and three of them hold the ringleaders of the room. On the fourth, a man with a sunken-in chest is inking a rose with thorns on the forearm of a boy who can’t be older than seventeen.

The lot of them are starved. They are dirty. They are cold. They are bored. Levi has been entertaining them all night, staking territory as most dangerous in the tight quarters. Can they not see his ink? This is a joke. His cigarette is almost gone. God damn it. There are no cameras here, no cell phones, nothing. No one knows the overcrowding, the filth, the deprivation.

Yuri and Kirill play cards at the table.

“He’s cheating,” Levi sighs on a velvety stream of smoke.

Toothless Kirill snarls at him.

Footsteps.

Voices.

There is someone coming up the stairs outside the cell. A ring of keys chatters; a heavy iron door groans and shudders like thunder clapping.

Levi stands. He is tinier than these men; he is stronger than these men. He is tired, and starving, and sore, and he wants to go home and take a bath in the Roman bath and get away from these stinking rot. He stands on tiptoe to peek out the bars near the top of the cell door.

The officer opens the cell, shackles him to take him out.

Kirill spits on him as he leaves.

The man giving the corrupted youth a tattoo doesn’t even bother to hide the makeshift needle and ink. Born thieves do not fear the guards; the guards fear the born thieves.

* * *

_А если я лягу в тюремную постельку,_  
 _Я буду страдать и умирать._

_And if I fall in a prison’s bed, I will suffer and I will die._

* * *

**vii. {st. petersburg, russia; 1130 hours MSK, two days ago}**

Eren props the refrigerator door open with a hip and peeks around at the pilot’s wife and children. “Do you like Thai food?” he asks, holding up like myrrh and frankincense a tin foil dish of leftovers from the best Thai place in the city.

The pilot’s wife can only glare. She pretends not to understand even their most forgiving attempts at German. The children, however, are wide-eyed and aching for social interaction. The pilot’s wife does not trust them because none of them are tied up in any way. It’s a good thing she doesn’t trust them. Armin’s aim is nearly inhuman. She won’t even know it when she dies. She’ll never know her husband is a dead man in California, either.

Eren makes a picnic on the granite-top island counter for himself and the pilot’s children. He turns on a football game. He swings his legs on the barstool, smiling brightly, appraising the pilot’s children in the same eager, reckless fashion that they regard him.

“Hallo,” he singsongs.

“Hallo,” they chirp back, picking through the Phad Thai and curry. The oldest, the brother, he looks Eren up and down with a cute little look of ignorant concern. He adds, “Who are you?”

“ _Shestyorka_ ,” Eren hums proudly. “But a special one,” he adds quickly, like they even know.

Armin passes through the room. On the cream-colored sofa, the pilot’s wife is crying again. Armin has his hair in a sloppy bun and a double-action tucked in against the small of his back. He stops to cast the woman a look somewhere between disdain and annoyance. Eren points at Armin. “You see him?”

The little German children nod in unison.

“ _Torpedo_ ,” Eren explains. He makes silent guns out of his fingers, pretending to shoot both the children. The pilot’s children laugh. Annie, Reiner, Bert—the children know them. Of course they know them. It’s the bulls who brought the pilot’s wife and children here, after all, with canvas sacks over their little blond heads and rope burns gnawing at their wrists.

“What is that?” the pilot’s son asks in German, pointing at the tattoo on Eren’s left forearm—the cat, with the bow tie, the one they knocked him out to force on him before he was released. What else would they do for a boy fresh out of an Yekaterinburg brothel?

“ _Shut up_ ,” Armin hisses at the pilot’s wife, turning up the football game.

“It’s a tattoo,” Eren tells the children. “See the beetle? It means I’m a crook. See this one? Means I came of age in prison.” Eren proudly shows off the Madonna and child on his chest. He shrugs. “You two are lucky,” he says, swinging back and forth on the barstool. He reaches across the island counter to steal a bite of the Phad Thai the pilot’s children are nibbling at. “You know what happened to me when I was your age? I sure as hell wasn’t sitting in a beautiful house eating tasty food. No, they sold me into sex and when I finally got fed up with it, I killed a man. But then an old client of mine bailed me out and I started stealing art for him. I mean, it was the least I could do for the guy when he used to pay me so much to just bend over and moan.”

Armin shoots Eren a warning look from the living room.

The pilot’s children gawk at him.

The pilot’s wife snarls, “ _Motherfucker_ ,” in cruel, guttural German. 

Eren points at Armin. “ _Myshka_ over there, he’s got ‘ACAB’ on his knuckles, and if he took off his shirt, you’d see the spider web on his side. Those aren’t angel kisses by his eye, those little dots mean something, too. He’s from London. Don’t worry, you can trust him. I can vouch for him. See the dagger on his neck? He’s killed ten men. On his own, at least. You’d never believe he’s from London. You’d think he was born and raised here.”

“Enough,” Armin says politely. He slips the gun out into his hand and the pilot’s wife almost leaps into fight-or-flight, _almost_ , but she is too spineless. She cries into her hands on the couch. Her son says, “Momma, stop crying,” and he’s smart, he really is. There’s no reason to cry. Armin joins them at the island counter and takes a bite of Phad Thai, too, popping the cartridge out of the handgun and letting the pilot’s children pass it back and forth.

“Have you ever shot a gun?” Armin prompts.

“ _Nein_ ,” the children chorus.

“You wanna shoot a gun?”

“ _Ja!_ ” the children chorus.

“Hey, everyone should shoot a gun at least once in their lifetime,” Eren agrees, and he and Armin laugh because they know the punch line.

Mikasa is wearing her silk robe this morning. She drifts in like a ghost; she pets Eren’s head, and Armin’s head. She starts a brew of tea. She says in her strange clipped accent, “Erwin is awake. He is nervous.”

“Levi will be home today,” Eren reassures. He is mostly reassuring himself, too.

“Does _she_ have tattoos?” the pilot’s children ask together.

The pilot’s wife is praying aloud in her fingertips, smearing snot and tears.

Mikasa stares at the children like they are aliens from another planet. She looks to Armin, then Eren. She has the most beautiful Japanese eyes.

“Yes,” Eren whispers conspiratorially, leaning close with the German children. “She’s a yakuza princess. You wanna see the dragons and _oni_?”

“You can’t keep telling everyone she’s a yakuza princess,” Armin mutters through his teeth. “She’s trying to get out alive.”

“They’re not going to tell anyone,” Eren argues.

Armin takes back the handgun cartridge and reloads with the melodic singsong of gun metal.

“ _Sind Sie Monster_?” the youngest of the pilot’s children asks—a little towheaded girl, maybe no older than three. Eren’s smile falls. His faulty moral compass spins wildly out of control. Mikasa throws the child a dirty look; she is very protective over Eren, like most of the house.

“ _Nein_ ,” Armin answers for him. He offers the little girl his best sagely smile, brow knotting. “ _Wir sind die J_ _äger_.”

* * *

_А я… Все равно я убегу._

_Anyway, I will run away._

* * *

**viii. {los angeles, california; 0300 hours, one day ago}**

The red-eye to JFK has landed.

Marco is antsy. A drink at the airport bar after crashing from the blow has only mildly dulled the panic.

Word has spread like wildfire through their ranks that there was a rat at the exchange with the Russians, and now Marco is clutching his passport beside Jean in an LAX terminal, with two pairs of clothing in his leather backpack, wrinkled jeans and a gray hoodie, bloodshot eyes and fifty thousand in his account to recover when they land in Paris.

The sky is a heavy purple blanket, suffocating California’s coast.

“What happened to the rat?” Jean croaks, falling asleep on Marco’s shoulder.

Marco shakes his head. “You know what happens to rats.”

“What’s the DEA again?”

“Drug Enforcement Administration. You should know that. You’re an ex-Marine.”

“But they can’t get you because there’s nothing connecting you to the deal. Right?”

Marco’s fingers are clammy on his passport. He is sick to his stomach. He is afraid it was Conny, his precious stupid cousin Conny. His throat is tight; his eyes are burning. Because he wants to pop a Xanax and sleep, or because he wants to cry, or because he wants to get violent to work through the chaos—he’s not sure.

“They’re forcing me to retire early,” Marco husks, in disbelief. “You know, they like to scare you. They like to say, ‘You can never get out of a gang.’ But shit, when your mother’s the People’s princess, all she has to do is say, ‘You’re moving to Europe, goodbye,’ and you’re golden. It’s not about tradition anymore. It’s just about power.”

“It’s not that you’re not powerful, Marco. It’s that she loves you too much.”

Jean’s fingers dig into his shoulder. He kisses him, full on the mouth, right there in the airport as dead-tired flight attendants roll by and other red-eye victims look on in late-night disapproval.

There is silence between them.

“I like your freckles,” Jean mumbles on his ear.

Marco can’t think straight. The Matryoshka dolls deal was to send Jean to Russia, to get him out of harm’s way because God knew what might become of the boyfriend of a People’s prince. And now here he is, at his mother’s command, getting forcibly extricated. It feels like exile. It feels like a dream. It’s terrifying and sort of thrilling but he is not sure what he’s supposed to do when all his life he has been his mother’s little acolyte.

“So we’re taking the train from Paris to Moscow?” Jean asks for the seventh time since the itinerary changed.

“And we have a ride waiting for us from Moscow to St. Petersburg,” Marco reminds.

“Once,” Jean whispers as their flight begins to board; he will not unwind his arm from Marco’s side, clinging with hot, needy fingers, “I snuck weed through airport security by sticking the baggie in a bottle of Gatorade and putting it in my suitcase. Nothing. Nothing happened. Can you believe that?”

This is the first time in Marco’s life he has felt the pressure of doing something dangerous, and perhaps it is because clinging to him with hot needy fingers is the most precious part of his life and he couldn’t bear to see anything happen to him.

* * *

**ix. {undisclosed pretrial detention center, st. petersburg, russia; 1125 hours MSK, two days ago}**

“You look much better in a suit and tie,” Petra sighs in the interrogation room.

They took him from the cell and into the medical examination wing; behind a curtain with stony-faced military men, Hanji and Erd performed the trick like trained circus animals. And now here they are, Petra on one side of the table, Hanji and Erd speaking with the guards and warden in the mildew-lined corridor.

Levi shrugs, offering a dry smirk. The cuffs are cold on his wrists. He knows Petra is counting every one of his tattoos, naked as he is from the waist up. He misses his suit and tie, too. He does not prefer unwillingly exposing his secrets. The stars on his knees say he will bow for no man; the Cathedral on his chest flaunts as many cupolas for as many years he’s done time. The holy mother and child boast two different meanings. There is an eye inside a triangle on his side.

“So how is my mother?” Levi husks, jaw tight, cutting Petra a look. Petra Raal, ah, Petra Raal, his evil mastermind mistress. She is a hit woman. Some ballerinas make it to the stage; others channel the pain of toe shoes into firing machine guns like pros. She could be his sister, his wife, depending on the story of the day. Once she was a nun packing heat under her habit; the lace had made such a beautiful holster.

 _How is my mother?_ Code: What now, Raal?

“She says she’ll cook you a real meal when you get out,” Petra whispers back. _Paperwork. Paperwork is all that’s left._

“I could use a real meal.” Levi fumbles for another cigarette, lets Petra light it for him from across the table. He can see her cleavage. He misses her cleavage. “I’m fucking sick of _kasha_.”

“You’re so sickly,” Petra grits out, eyes flashing. She means, _The lawyer and medical examiner are forcing your release._ “You need to get better.” _It’s a clause in the law the authorities overlook._

Levi taps cigarette ash in the guard’s coffee cup; it was a poor decision on the man’s end to leave it in here with a criminal. A wistful smile darkens Levi’s face. He can’t help it. He is so close. Sometimes at night he still feels like he must wash the blood off his hands, but there is no blood on his hands, there has not been blood on his hands, he is paranoid, he is uncomfortable, this is the life of a hired killer. His hands shake. He misses the coffee cup. Petra reaches out to steady him at the wrist with her cool, graceful fingers.

Levi clears his throat. “I want to go home,” he says thickly, resolutely.

“I’m bringing you home,” Petra promises. 

* * *

_И ты не придешь ко мне, мать моя родная,_  
 _Меня приласкать, поцеловать._

  
_And you will not come to me, my mother dear, to embrace me, to kiss me._

* * *

**x. {los angeles, california; 1300 hours PDT}**

There will not be a Latin Kings chapter in LA after this. Not organized, at least.

“One step at a time,” Nile sighs, and shares a fist-bump with the rest of his unit, all bundled tight in their bulletproof vests.

* * *

**xi. {st. petersburg, russia; 2100 hours MSK}**

Annie, Berthold, Reiner—they’re too good, sometimes. It scares Erwin the same that it pleases him.

It will probably be in the papers, on some obscure online news website, by the end of the week, either _unsolved_ , _under investigation_ , or _arrests made_. Like a trail of breadcrumbs through the forest, the authorities are quite easy to lead astray from the truth. They will preach whatever they think will calm the storm of public uproar, whatever method of brainwashing is popular these days.

 _German pilot found in pieces along California coast. Wife and children found in Danube_.

Erwin trades his banyan robe for a casual shirt, running his hands through his hair and inspecting his reflection in the long mirrors in the hall. He lights a cigarette. It bounces on his lower lip as he moves through the manor.

He watched the headlights bounce in and off the walls when the car rolled in through the gates, but he has been trying desperately hard not to get too excited. He does not want to seem too excited.

He passes through the living room. Armin is asleep on the loveseat with Eren, in his white pants and white shirt, such an angel for a killer. Eren is, of course, half-dressed per usual, far too aware of his own sensuality and sex appeal for his own good. Mikasa stares Erwin down from the leather armchair, flipping through television channels.

“ _Konbanwa_ , _hime_ ,” Erwin jokes.

“They’re home,” Mikasa replies flatly.

“You think it worked, Mikasa?”

“I think it worked, Erwin.”

Erwin moves to his bedroom. He can feel his heartbeat in his palms.

He waits in the cool shadows of his room. He hears commotion. The commotion moves up through the house. Security codes, bodyguards. But Erwin knows. He knows even before his bedroom door flies open, and there Levi stands in a wrinkled gray shirt and stained pants.  

They have brought Levi home.

Levi charges him; he knocks him to the bed. He has his hands on his throat. Surely the whole house can hear him slapping his face like a jilted lover, cursing and shouting coarsely, “This is your fault, God damn it! The job wasn’t careful enough. You know I’m not sloppy. I cannot believe you left me there all night. You promised me I’d never be behind bars again!”

Erwin laughs and laughs, cups Levi’s scratchy face in his hands and drags him into a biting, hungry kiss. Levi retaliates with tongue. Levi crumbles into his arms. Levi lets him roll over and crush him to the bed, cleaving to him like he is afraid of the monsters under the bed. His fingers shake as he rips at Erwin’s shirt.

“I want to see the marks I know,” he spits, livid. And then he melts again, under Erwin’s stroking knuckles. “I want to kiss the tattoos I know…”

He kisses the tattoos he knows. The stars of rank on Erwin’s shoulders, the epaulette on his left arm, the pair of eyes straddling his hips that warn all of his sexuality, the cathedral covering his torso with patterned cupolas and holy figures, the manacles on his ankles and the bells on the insteps of his feet. His kisses are worshipful. He is still shaking in Erwin’s arms.

“I want a bath,” Levi snaps, undressing immediately and staggering to the adjoining bathroom.

Erwin watches him, smiling stupidly, loving the line of his body, the color of his skin. He is feeling more relief than he had expected. The mark of Cain looks good under those dark, damning eyes.

“Eren will be angry you didn’t wake him up when you got home,” Erwin says.

“I’ll make it up to Eren tomorrow,” Levi hints.

“The pilot’s wife and children are dead.”

“I hope so. Bloody trash.”

“We have an important shipment to pick up in Moscow in eight hours.”

Levi sticks his head back into the bedroom, scowling. He is naked. Erwin wants to ravish him. He must contain himself. Levi scrubs a hand down his face and fires back, “Can a man not fucking sleep between jail and jobs?”

“I can send Armin and Eren,” Erwin concedes. “You and I can sleep.”

Levi peeks at Erwin from the hinges of the bathroom door. He is surrendering. He is home and he is tired. “Thank you,” he whispers. He knows as well as any of them that Erwin does not have to care if they are detained or not. He does not have to risk a damn thing to get them released. He does not have to care, at all, actually, about any of them. But he does. And so Levi says again, “Thank you…”

Erwin is just happy the heroin is America’s problem now, and his bed will smell like Levi once again tonight. He’s moved one of the stolen Rembrandts in here above the headboard; he wants to make love under art worth millions of dollars.

* * *

_Постой, паровоз, не стучите, колеса,_  
 _Кондуктор, нажми на тормоза._

_Wait a minute, train. Wheels, do not knock. Conductor, hit the brakes._

_Я к маменьке родной с последним приветом_  
 _Хочу показаться на глаза._

_I am hurrying to my mother with a last salute._

* * *

  ** _end._ **


	2. blood the covenant, part the first.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Language is one of the world’s last greatest magic tricks. Speaking more than one language is pretty much a prerequisite for international crime. Like a basic knowledge of politics and current events, street smarts, weapons handling, anonymity. Ambidexterity and emergency first aid are pluses, but not mandatory. “Get up,” Erwin says before the bids are even chirping, silhouette arcing above them on the couch. Armin snaps to, like he’s afraid of being caught snuggling Eren in his sleep. Eren whines into a throw pillow. “Get up,” Erwin says again. “There’s a package arriving in Moscow in less than eight hours. You need to pick it up.” // SO I WROTE MORE?? idfk i had to i blame my friends who are awful influences

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so this is a follow-up to a fic prompt from vanillaoverlord on tumblr... there were too many questions left unanswered. i felt the need to answer them. WARNING: this is massively multiship. like, legitimately. not a lot of explicit scenes (except jeanmarco, obvs) but definitely a lot of implications. sometimes more towards deep platonic bonds. sometimes just realism.

**_blood of the covenant, part the first._ **

**i. {moscow, russia; 0500 hours MSK}**

_Очи чёрные, очи страстные, очи жгучие и прекрасные…_

_Black eyes, passionate eyes, burning and beautiful eyes…_

Language is one of the world’s last greatest magic tricks.

Speaking more than one language is pretty much a prerequisite for international crime. Like a basic knowledge of politics and current events, street smarts, weapons handling, anonymity. Ambidexterity and emergency first aid are pluses, but not mandatory.

“Get up,” Erwin says before the bids are even chirping, silhouette arcing above them on the couch. Armin snaps to, like he’s afraid of being caught snuggling Eren in his sleep. Eren whines into a throw pillow. “Get up,” Erwin says again. “There’s a package arriving in Moscow in less than eight hours. You need to pick it up.”

They are staggering in through the broad white facade of the Belorussky Station now, shuffling past marble pillars and electronic departure-arrival boards. A train from the sister station in Paris has just pulled in. The rest of the world is still sleeping; the sun has not yet risen and the sky is a tumultuous terrain of clouds threatening rain. Under Eren’s fur-lined parka are a number of knives in secret places and one Italian semi-automatic. Armin carries three. He looks too small and angelic for his leather jacket and blue scarf, blond hair in a fashionable swoop off his brow and red gloves covering his marked hands. Not a contract killer, no. A troubled art student, perhaps. A smile like his makes people trust him too easy.

“I’m hungry,” Eren complains.

“Levi came home last night,” Armin counters, a lot like talking to himself to keep awake and alert.

“I don’t believe it. He would have come to me right away.”

“Not everyone is in love with you, Eren.”

“I try.”

They drink coffee waiting for the delivery the Paris train brings.

Shivering and miserable, the delivery enters the terminal holding hands—two young men, matching the given description. An Hispanic who looks more Mediterranean, kissed by freckles and puppy-dog eyes. A strung-out young American with something of a grown-out fade. The giveaways are the light blue backpack, the white jeans. The giveaways are unnecessary because who else but the special delivery would wander into Belorussky looking around like complete tourists.

“I thought there was only one of them,” Eren whispers to Armin.

“Things change,” Armin whispers back. Annie is waiting in the car outside. They need to hurry. As far as the rest of the half-asleep station is concerned, they are meeting fellow university students visiting for the weekend. They are friends; they are brothers. They block their path as the rest of the French train empties.

“Hallo, cutie,” Eren coos in English at the strung-out American who will not peel himself off the side of his taller companion. “How was the trip?”

“ _Long_ ,” the American spits back, not at all entirely distrusting.

Armin has, of course, gotten straight to business. In the midst of an awkward hug with the American’s companion, they are whispering together, into each other’s ears. Low hum of secrets and gossip and covert affairs. “We have a car outside,” Armin promises. “You can sleep on the way back.”

The traffic is, as always, hell on the M10 from Moscow to St. Petersburg, clogged like the arteries of a man in the grips of severe cardiac arrest. Dead stopped. The birds are chirping now. The sun is peeking over the horizon. Armin tosses a little baggie of nose candy back from the passenger seat, a black baggie printed with yellow lightning bolts. The American bumps immediately. Eren follows suit. The Mediterranean-Hispanic politely passes. He still does not trust any of them. And he shouldn’t, but trusting them is his only chance of living comfortably at this point.

“I need breakfast,” Eren complains again, bites his thumb to show off his mouth and flashes the curious American a saucy little wink.  

* * *

**ii. {krestnikov, russia; twenty-eight years ago}**

“We are not crazy men, but pragmatists,” says Alexander Ryzhkov, a man who will one day be a patriot for Sverdlovsk and the future Urals Five. “We only want equality.”

But it is only 1986 yet, and Krestnikov was left behind in the seventies by the government. They simply did not succeed like the other cities to which money is funneled in support, promotion, reward for industrial enterprises. It is no longer a city with hope. It is a village once again, with abandoned concrete projects, broken-out windows, wolves in family gardens. The wilderness is trying already to take back the city. The wilderness does not care about gas stations or schoolchildren or bunny-eared televisions in kitchens that smell like breakfast on Sunday morning, peeling floral wallpaper, screen doors, no running water.

Erwin’s father is only a schoolteacher.

He never wears anything but sweaters, long trousers, socks that cover his ankles. His glasses are cracked, but he is more concerned with acquiring enough groceries than getting spectacles fixed. Neighbors and friends crowd the tiny kitchen every Thursday night to drink coffee and liquor and talk equality, past revolutions, the future of the world, what will become of Krestnikov if Krestnikov does not prove its resilience. It has been around for centuries. What would the bones of their ancestors in the ground say if they knew they gave in?

“Do not get forgotten,” his father whispers to him at night, in the bounce of the lamp, voice ragged and raw from cigarettes and vodka, maybe tears, skin of his palm scratching down his stubble as he turns his face away into the shadows. “Fight for the forgotten.”

Erwin admires his father. He does not ask about his father’s tattoos, which he has only seen once or twice, because he understands his father hides them for a reason.

* * *

**iii. {novgorod, russia; 1500 hours MSK}**

Eren stands with a hip cocked to the side, nibbling some food from Neste Oil’s convenience store. He holds a thumb up and out, bored and curious to see just who passing this place a mile or two off the highway might even consider picking him up under the vibrant green and purple gas station sign.

“Stop that,” Armin reproves. Sometimes he can get so sick of Eren’s bullshit. Sometimes he can never get enough of Eren’s bullshit. Sometimes he still cannot sleep at night when Eren is not sleeping beside him; he a personal furnace and security blanket.

Bristled in rightful caution, the delivered pair have introduced themselves. Jean Kirschtein, Marco Bodt. Marco Bodt has already had to kindly ask Eren to back the fuck off his American lover. Jean and Marco Bodt are stuck together like prisoners, or hostages. It is really not very attractive, Armin thinks. It is suspicious, and ridiculous, and rather insulting. But perhaps the prince of the _Latin Kings_ is just unaccustomed to being on his own, little baby-faced thing.

They have been on the road for at least seven hours. They are almost home. They need to get out and stretch. There is opportunity to get out and stretch on the road itself, but running in circles around a car in bumper-to-bumper traffic gets boring after a while and the scenery is just so much nicer here. They hope to nurture an appreciation in their new comrades for the historical value of Veliky Novgorod.

“How old are you?” Jean asks in groggy English. He is much more talkative than his freckled counterpart. It might not be a good thing.

“Twenty-five,” Eren replies merrily.

“Twenty-six,” Armin echoes without looking up as they climb back into the car.

“Twenty-three,” Annie butts in.

“This is the rest of our lives,” Marco whispers, which seems a private thought. He buries his face against Jean’s shoulder and Jean looks to Armin, distraught. Armin looks back, brow knotted. What the fuck does Jean expect him to do about it?

“How much longer?” Eren whines.

“Three hours,” Annie says, lighting a cigarette.

* * *

_Знать, увидел вас я в недобрый час!_

_It seems I met you in an unlucky hour!_

* * *

 

**iv. {london, uk; ten years ago | st. petersburg, russia; five years ago}**

It is irony or perhaps poetic justice that the blond blue-eyed son of gun-toting granola-chewing long-haired peace activists winds up in a juvenile detention facility before he is seventeen.

Armin cuts his teeth on petty theft and turf wars. He is small; he is poor; his parents left him with his grandpa so they could battle for the harmony of humans and habitats somewhere in an African colony and Armin’s only option is to fight back. He wears his Anti-Social Behaviour Orders like badges of honor and serves a year for breaching the one about no fighting. _Battery occasioning bodily harm_ , his records say. The cops are bastards. The cops neglect the footnotes that if Armin had not occasioned bodily harm, bodily harm would have been occasioned upon him.

It is again irony or perhaps poetic justice that Armin considers himself an activist, too.

Armin just wants to speed through the streets of London on his motorbike singing and screaming and whooping at the top of his lungs with his friends. He just wants to take care of his grandfather. For the hoodies that foster him, he is extortion, blackmail, exaction. They deal ecstasy and cocaine. They organize illegal raves. They are the go-to gang for good times, good vibes. They do not fuck around. They get away with grievous crimes and service six months for stealing drinks on a hot day from an already picked-clean convenience store during the Tottenham riots.

Armin has killed once, to protect, and he had heart palpitations and insomnia until someone was successfully framed. He can’t say he did not feel something ominously transcendental when the gun went off and the life left the skinhead in a gurgle of blood. He can’t say that was a good thing.

Still, Armin does not shoot to kill. He never shoots to kill. His fellow hoodies give him tattoos to make him look tough but he does not shoot to kill. He doesn’t ask where the guns came from, either.

Armin never expects to be involved in a munitions trafficking job.

Then again, the UK _is_ the center of international arms trade, so maybe he has just been a painful fool until now.

“There’s money in this,” Laurie tells him, smart protective ruthless Laurie with his red leather jacket and bottle-blond hair, the little dagger at the corner of his eye. “Don’t you want your own flat? Don’t you wanna live like real people in the real world?”

Laurie fails to realize it is because they are already in the real world that they live the way they do, with mug shots and juvenile records. All cops are bastards. It is inked on his knuckles. _ACAB_. He is still rubbing cocoa butter on it.

Armin has arrived in St. Petersburg with a trunk full of ammunition.

Laurie’s not told him where the bullets are from. It’s an accident because Armin doesn’t know when Laurie went from elegant punk to international criminal. Armin’s been careless. Armin has been oblivious. He has a very bad feeling Laurie has connections to the Adams Family. Armin is staving off panic by turning down emotion and turning up logical reasoning. What he does not know will destroy him. What he does know is that he is to sell all these rounds to Georgians meeting him in great majestic Russia. He is to take the cash and get the fuck back to London. It is a simple task. He is going to have a flat. He is going to hang his grandpa’s old straw hat by the front door and drink fine scotch curled up in his pajamas on the couch. He is violating some treaty or another but he is no villain. This is only his side of the story and in his book, he is not a bad guy.

He makes the deal; he takes the cash. He is afraid for his fucking life. He is walking through the elegant stone and gothic architecture of St. Petersburg, thinking about how Peter the Great using Italian builders. A shining black car rolls up beside him and the passenger window rolls down like magic.

“ _Izvinite menya_ ,” calls a voice from the car.

Armin keeps walking. The cash is in his backpack. He needs to remember where the train station is.

“ _Excuse me!_ ” the voice calls in English.

“I don’t know you,” Armin spits back. He turns. He is prepared to be rude. He’s instead looking down the barrel of a sleek handgun pointed his way from within the tinted windows and leather interior.

“Get in the car,” says the blond man driving.

Armin bursts into tears. He can cry on command. He is good at manipulation. He once wanted to be a stage actor, in worldwide musicals even the Queen would pay to see. He holds his hands up. He blubbers, he lies, “You have the wrong man! I’m a student! I—”

“I know how much money is in your bag, now get in the fucking car,” the blond man says with all the romantic tenderness of a first date.

The youth justice system blamed themselves, blamed genetics. They did not take a moment to think that maybe Armin is just battle-torn on the home front, that no longer a child but like a child soldier he has sharpened street smarts and survival of the fittest into a very specific skill set. He tries by most accounts to be a good person, whether that means good for himself, good for others, good for no one. He will go down fighting for this cause.

Armin gets in the car.

The man takes him to dinner.

Armin is waiting patiently for a chance to run. He is checking his surroundings. He is opening and closing his fists, preening for gun control. He is not new by any means to the sticky webs of the underworld and its glittering-eyed spiders, but this is his first international crime and he is cold, stiff, sick with panic.

“Erwin Smith,” the man introduces himself. They are in a fine-dining restaurant. The sun is setting, swallowing the distant cathedral. Erwin orders them both wine. He says, in lyrical English, “I’m sorry, friend, but you cannot go home.”

“And why is that?” Armin hisses, finally realizing this man knows more than he does. He is trapped. He is a fly in the web. Goosebumps rise from his head to his toe and it feels like the wind tugging at his arm hairs when he is flying down the road at night on his motorbike.

“Because you will die.”

It’s simple, calm, without frills. It comes with a smile that makes the man, Erwin, look too young and beautiful, fashion spread young and beautiful, trustworthy young and beautiful. Glacial blue eyes, pale blond hair, Slavic strength in his bones and gestures.

“The men you just sold to have been poking around with some of my associates, raising suspicion for me and my brothers. I haven’t been very happy about it. It makes my morning coffee a little more stressful than I prefer. You’re from London, I’m assuming?”

Armin does not answer. He glares at Erwin over the sparkling wine. He wishes to know how Erwin knew that.

Erwin lifts his glass in a toast. “Have you ever killed a man?”

Armin swallows hard on the lump in his throat.

Erwin swallows a sip of wine. He licks his lips and wipes condensation off his fingers onto his fabric napkin. His timbre is like hymns and litanies resounding off the nave during Mass, back when Armin hadn’t gone to church just to pray in secret, hiding near the holy water and pretending the crying bloody Christs did not expect better of him. Erwin murmurs, “The deal you just made has successfully moved attention off of my idiot associates and on to an arms trade with the UK. The brotherhood needs— _I_ need to repay you somehow.”

It hits Armin then that he has just rung the execution bells for his comrades and friends back in London.

It hits him that he is not going home. The others can’t protect him, back home. The others are in danger, themselves. The subtle nuances in Erwin’s expression hint Laurie and the others never cared about protecting him, that maybe they never expected him to come back in the first place.

Armin stands with a loud scrape of the chair against the fine restaurant floor. He runs for the terraces over the Neva River. People are staring. He gags twice, clinging to the wrought-iron. He throws up into the water and cries real tears for the first time in years.

This blond Russian man, this Erwin Smith, is suddenly at his side. Armin chokes on a breath. Erwin encircles an arm around his shoulders and Armin’s world is spinning out of control. Erwin hands him a napkin to wipe the bile off his lower lip. As he turns Armin in his arms like the steps of a waltz, hovering to whisper in his ear, Armin is keenly aware that those still arbitrarily glancing their way probably believe this to be some ritzy date gone sour. Armin laughs so suddenly, he gags again.

“What’s your birthday?” Erwin prods, smiling like a gentleman. He _is_ a gentleman. He is wearing an emerald green shirt and a slate-gray suit, lapis lazuli tie pin in the shape of a roaring lion near his heart.

“November 3, 1989,” Armin chokes.

“Temperance and The Pope.” Erwin is tickled by this. “Your Tarot cards. Temperance stands between Death and The Devil. Temperance begs us to confront who we are, who we think we are, who we will become. The Pope—sorry, The _Hierophant_ —represents identity, individuation. It can mean allies, good advice, assistance. Reversed, it represents lies and persecution. It means: reexamine your understanding of meanings, your personal convictions, the world itself. Tell me, _myshka_. What do you fight for, hm?”

Armin can feel the way the blood flows through his tiny veins being rewritten.

Something is happening inside him and it is cold and terrifying but shivers like freedom. He wipes angrily at his tears, ashamed and embarrassed. He is stronger than this. He is smarter than this. He has not only been touched by this small speech, he has been ripped to shreds by the claws of insight.

The world as he knew it has been knocked upside-down—or maybe it has been righted, and was far too long upside-down to begin with.

What _does_ he fight for? “For the truth,” Armin’s voice quakes.

Erwin nods, like this is acceptable but needs fine-tuning. “No,” he says, which still somehow fits with his nodding. “You will fight for me, now. You will never cry again in your life. You will be safe.”

“I want a Beretta 92,” Armin ices out.

Erwin’s phone rings; he answers and speaks hurriedly, melodically, in Russian. His presence is disarming. It is comforting. It’s the auspicious black magic of charisma so intense it should be criminal. (Ha.)

Armin eats the expensive meal, smiling meekly at Erwin’s awkwardly informal dinner conversation. Armin does not trust him yet. But Armin has unofficially given up on fearing death. It makes dinner taste a lot better.

* * *

**v. {st. petersburg, russia; 2000 hours MSK}**

Marco presents Erwin Smith with the small gift his mother sent along. Erwin Smith seems beyond pleased.

Marco trusts them only because their lives are in their hands. He trusts them because there is no other option. Then again, he trusted them before—the original plan was to ship Jean to them to keep him safe, after all—but the sudden change in plans has made his trust gauge a little shaky with anxiety.

He blames it on how disarmingly, misleadingly _normal_ they all are, these Russian brothers. He does not want to admit what it really is.

He does not want to admit even to himself that it’s because his entire life, the decisions have never been in his hands and now that they are, the unknown is terrifying him. He inherited his job. He was born into his kingdom. He was always surrounded by tattooed advisors who taught him the difference between illegal powders, how to use his words, how to cheat the system, how to avoid suspicion, how to take care of money, how to load a gun, how to protect the family, how to fight dehumanization and achieve enlightenment, order, hope, according to the King Manifesto, yes, relatives drinking imported beer, whistling, shouting, watching the Caribbean Cup, chorusing around big Sunday dinners, “ _La tierra de Borinquen donde he nacido yo_ … _Es Borinquen la hija, la hija, del mar y el sol, del mar y el sol, del mar y el sol_ …!”

Marco has been taught, but he has not learned.

Suddenly he is not quite sure he wants to learn.

Suddenly, he is clinging to the stripped ideology like a thread close to snapping from the weight of the disillusioned tapestry it’s spun. He has forgotten the point. He is staring the point down the barrel—

He is sitting at the long table in an excessively ornamented dining room. The table is black walnut. At the corners are giltwood angel faces. It is grotesquely baroque like only Europeans and corrupt businessmen can accomplish.

They are gathered around the table like a fucking family. He has learned their names by now—Hanji, Mikasa, Levi, Petra, Erd, Annie, Armin, Eren, Berthold, Reiner. And at the head of the table in a plain white V-neck and Armani jeans is Erwin Smith himself, Erwin Smith who sent the heroin-stuffed Matryoshka dolls on a German plane, Erwin Smith whom Marco’s mother has spoken about, and only spoken good things about, and it is hard to look at him and think he is a criminal mastermind. He, like so many criminal masterminds, bears tattoos like scars from Roman nails. Marco is both fascinated and disturbed by how religious Russian ink is.

“So who killed the pilot?” Marco asks.

“Me,” Annie sighs, braiding and unbraiding her hair as she chews her food because she cannot be bothered to otherwise join in on dinner conversation.

“ _Ya budu konchit' na tvoyo litso!_ ” Jean exclaims, raising his drink high. He’s been practicing saying it all the way home.

The entire table silences to a ringing in the ears. And then everyone looks to Eren.

“I taught him that,” Eren confirms with a Cheshire grin.

Levi mutters something around his drink, and it’s obviously not something nice. For a moment, there is chaos. It wouldn’t be like a family at dinner without some dysfunction and contention, right? Annie laughs so suddenly, she almost chokes. Armin looks sharply to Eren; Mikasa shoots up from her seat to Erwin’s left and Erwin touches her arm to make her sit back down. Eren has gone contorted in his dining chair from leg-swinging child to practically crouched on his haunches jabbing across the table as he spills a string of Slavic words too beautiful to be coming from a face so injured and angry. He has a fork in his hand like an extension of his accusatory finger.

Marco and Jean sit very quiet and very still, arms close enough that they could be sharing their uncomfortable goosebumps.

Eren’s eyes are glassy with tears, but his face is twisted by stifled fury. He throws his silver down and leaves the dining room, storming off in his bare feet. There is silence as the gentle thudding fades away somewhere upstairs; a door slams.

“Forgive him,” Levi whispers against laced fingers, voice tiny and raspy. “And don’t let him teach you anything more.”

“Tell us about California!” Erwin nods congenially, cracking a knuckle or two with one thumb as he scrapes some meat off his fork. “I have not been to California in almost ten years. Tell me all about it.”

Marco relaxes. Jean is staring at Armin because Armin is glaring at Jean. Marco clears his throat and begins with, “Well, I don’t know if you went to Los Angeles, Erwin, but it’s still as tired and phony as ever…”

* * *

_Ох, недаром вы глубины темней._

_Oh, not for nothing are you darker than the deep._

* * *

 

**vi. {tokyo, japan; two years ago | moscow, russia; one year ago}**

The streets are a rippling, wandering tide of white and black festival garb. Police officers mingle near the corners. Street food vendors call out their menus. It is Sanja Matsuri and the shrines are on the move. The rhythmic patterns of whistles and bells layer over echoing drums. Mikasa wears her hair in a ponytail. She cools herself with a paper hand fan. She stands between her father and his advisor. Little brothers and big brothers and literal brothers are marching through the streets with the _mikoshi_ , colorful gang tattoos on display as their muscles slither and shine.

The police like to call them _bōryokudan_ , or violence groups. They call themselves _chivalrous organizations_. Never mind who proved most chivalrous after the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami.

The yakuza are too honorable for the paltry street crimes European and American cousin syndicates indulge in. Particularly the _Inagawa-kai_. The truth is that the underworld has always been in charge; from banking and realty operations, to stock and high corporate and the right wing nationalists. How else can a house stand without foundation?

The _ninkyo_ code sings of justice and fate.

It is either terrifying or hilarious that all criminal codes scream for justice and fate.

Across the street, Mikasa watches the lights and lack of action in the _pachinko_ bars. It is like a wasteland in there, nobody moving except to gamble again, tap away cigarette ash.

Mikasa is lucky.

Some suited slimy men laugh in her face when they hear she is training to be _kaikei_ , or when her father boasts, “She could disarm one of your little brothers in less than thirty seconds.” She is the one laughing when she demonstrates, however. While she is training in her father’s office, she wears a loose sleeveless shirt to show off her _irezumi_.

Mikasa has been practicing the tea ceremony with her mother for the last seven years. She is not a _nee-san_ , no, but she has shared sake with her father. She has earned recognition from her father’s associates for a number of stealth jobs she has assisted on. She has demons and dragons and flowers in reds, blues, down her side, her thighs, her back. But a beautiful world of tea ceremonies and traditional ink is a lie. The beauty is one with the cruelty like a butterfly ensnared in a spider web, or an inch of little finger sent to her father in a ribbon-tied, silk-lined box.

If she closes her eyes now, she can hear shrine bells. They are like ice falling in the winter, droplets of water in a pond. Crystalline, fragile, chilling. But they are not real. She is in a fine hotel room with a perfect view of Moscow out on the balcony, and there are no shrine bells here.

Mikasa likes art auctions and antiques fencing jobs.

A Muromachi-period piece, two swallows and a willow branch, were stolen from a yakuza art collector in Tokyo. They want it back for the Nezu. Mikasa sits politely through the Russian auction, whispering against her shoulder to her brothers. They each carry concealed weapons. Mikasa cut her hair last month. It barely covers the scar on her cheek from the day she earned her last tattoo. She crosses her legs elegantly, fine jeans and finer jacket. The brother to her right leans close as the crowd stirs at a high offer on an antique. He whispers, “The Muromachi piece is next. Go out, down the hall, seventh door on the left. It is where they finalize the sales. We will meet you there after the piece is sold.”

Right, and in this room, they will confront the wealthy Slav who believes he’s just purchased a very priceless Japanese piece but they are going to buy it back from him. Money or bullets, whatever they need to spend.

Mikasa drifts past Russians, Ukrainians, Uzbekistanis, Pakistanis, Belarussians, French, German, Dutch. She slips into the seventh door on the left. The man in charge inside begins to protest. Mikasa disengages safety on her Makarov, cocks the hammer for a more accurate single-action shot. She doesn’t like guns; her father doesn’t like guns. The yakuza themselves do not prefer guns and the gun laws in Japan are a real pain in the ass, anyway. She ices out in shoddy Russian, “Get back. Sit down. Do not say a word. Put your cell phone on the desk. You’ll be patient, won’t you? This won’t take longer than twenty minutes.”

The man’s cell phone sits out of his reach. Mikasa sits with her back to an adjacent wall, the door and the Russian man in perfect sight. They talk about the weather, his family, the economy. She waits for her brothers.

She has never in her wildest dreams or darkest nightmares imagined that when her brothers come into the room with its crates and calculators and cash box, they are there to kill _her_.

She fights back. She holds her own for a good five minutes. It knocks the wind out of her when Hideyori heaves her across the room and into a trunk of Mesoamerican loot. Mikasa sees stars. The Russian man in charge of the money and crates knows better than to run; he hides behind a Chinese partition in the cramped little room.

“We’re very sorry, princess,” Shiro, the one with crooked teeth, simpers.

“Your daddy owes us.” Hideyori is half-nursing the bloody nose Mikasa gave him.

“We’re sooo sorry, angel…”

“He’s in trouble, see. He hasn’t told you, but he is.”

“Maybe if he didn’t have his daughter playing accountant, he wouldn’t be in debt.”

“It was fun to pretend, right? But this isn’t like playing house—”

Hideyori’s words dissolve into a burst of red. Mikasa chokes on a scream.

She rolls to the side, but not fast enough. Hideyori falls on her, blood spewing from the axillary artery between shoulder and neck. The sound of a shell hits the floor like shrine bells. Hideyori’s body is jerking like a flopping fish atop her.

With a guttural, animalistic shriek, Mikasa throws him away and scrambles to her feet. She does not think. She flings herself up onto the desk, using it as a springboard to launch at her other betrayer. She has a knife she keeps on her person at all times. It is a knife from her father. The knife is in her hand. The knife is in the gangster’s throat. Shiro shouts, he gurgles, he claws at her hard enough to bruise, pulling hair, thumbs jabbing for her eyes. She yanks the knife out and plunges it deep again, wondering what will happen if she hits an airway. Blood paints her face. It is going to congeal in her hair.

There are arms around her waist. She is a beast. She is screaming obscenities in her own language. The arms around her waist drag her back out into the hall and to the window, and she escapes with whomever the arms belong to, tumbling down into bushes as another voice shouts in Russian, “ _Go! Go!_ ” They scrape knuckles and knees on a stacked-stone courtyard wall.

She does not know who she is running with. She just runs. The arms guide her. The arms have hands that pull her in the direction she needs to turn. She is not unpracticed; she lifts her red scarf to cover her face from the nose down. One glance of blood on her by any random stranger and they are fucked.

There is a car. The hands push her into the backseat. It is leather-lined; it has tinted windows. There is already another blond man in the car, hair in a fashionable little halfback. He is spitting words at the stranger with the arms, scathing words, castigating words. His eyes are like blue fire. The stranger with the pushing hands follows Mikasa into the car and slams the door.

Mikasa listens to the blond one’s damning lecture and watches the stranger with the arms checking the silencer on his .22, slipping it into his parka. Mikasa struggles to find the words in the right language.

“You’re an awful shot,” Mikasa hisses as the car peels away from the curb and they are off somewhere safe in sprawling Moscow.

The stranger with the arms is jumpy, charged, practically vibrating with leftover adrenaline. He cannot be older than twenty-five. His wide amber eyes speak of undying innocence, or vibrant madness. There is a spec of dried blood on his nose from the spray of a yakuza neck. “I know,” he replies gaily. “It was the heat of the moment, okay? Give me your gun.”

“Who are you?” Mikasa demands.

The stranger with the arms fumbles for a cigarette. He lights it with an embossed Zippo. He breathes out some smoke and taps twice on the dividing glass between backseat and front seat. It is obviously a signal of some sort.

“Eren Jäger,” he says. He leans forward and the blond one slams the dividing glass open to speak to those up front, still fuming. Mikasa has no qualms about handing Eren her gun. She watches him wipe fingerprints and stow it in his pocket.

In the hotel, phone calls are made. There are three others—the angry little blond with the ponytail, a bigger broader blond with a hard, cold face, and a blonde girl who looks exactly the part with her white dress shirt and nice black slacks. They pack heat and leave. Mikasa sits with her knees drawn to her chest, flipping through foreign television. She does not care if Eren with the arms is looking at her. She does not care if he breathes the same air as her. The news is already talk about the killing at the art auction. Japanese mafia. Arrests made.

“Don’t worry,” Eren says, curled up on the opposite bed. “We planned to have those men arrested.” He pauses. He sighs, guiltily. “The others have to go finish our assignment now. I accidentally got distracted saving you.”

From one spider web to another, the butterfly has wriggled.

Mikasa leaves the bathroom door open when she goes to change. She does not trust surprises and secrets right now. She can see this Eren man watching her from the bed, rather indiscreetly, but not at all wickedly, as she strips her dirty clothes and stands in the artificial light in nothing but her tattoos and panties. Red lotuses frame her nipples. There is an _oni_ at the small of her back. Everything that has just happened finally slams into her full-force. She throws up.

“You don’t even know who I am,” Mikasa warns, very flatly, very carefully. “Why did you save me?”

Eren shrugs. He looks uncomfortable, disgruntled. He shrugs a second time. “Why wouldn’t I have saved you?”

Mikasa does not know why, but she kisses him.

It might have something to do with control. It might have more to do with being on her own and being afraid. It might have even more to do with the way he is less a man grinding up against her panties and more a partner—unassertive, humble, harmless. It is like playing a hand game with friends. It is empty of lust and somewhat anticlimactic, somewhat lazy, but it knots an inexplicable red string of fate between them, sewn into their wounds like stitches, in a way that only stripped, primal moments of existence can achieve: physical connection devoid of romance, or spilling blood together.

She pulls her white T-shirt on over her naked skin and laughs so hard, tears clot at her lashes. She shakes her head and says: “No. That will never happen again.”

Eren grins guiltily. “Agreed.”

Their boss’s name is Erwin Smith.

There is no romanticizing the discipline he doles out on Eren for nearly blowing a tightly-organized assignment. A small man with dark hair and narrowed eyes they call _Levi_ drags Eren into privacy already balling up his fists to strike.

“We will fly your father here,” Erwin offers, clearly a man in peace-keeping mode.

Mikasa shakes her head. “No.”

Erwin already has his phone out, dialing a Japanese number. He holds the phone to Mikasa. Mikasa snatches it, throwing him a dirty glance.

“ _Princess, forgive me_ —”

“Did you put a hit on me?” Mikasa gasps, tears burning the backs of her eyes. She keeps her head down, but she sees the hotel door open, she sees Eren come slinking back in for his shoes and jacket, she watches him take any weapons out of his belongings and lay them near a normal-enough briefcase that probably doubles as weapons case, she sees him already blooming black and blue and wiping tears with the back of his hand as he puts on his parka and leaves with this Levi fellow. Her Makarov is sitting next to his suppressed pistol.

Her father’s voice is crackly. He has been weeping. “No, princess. Do you believe me?”

The worst part is not that she doesn’t, but that she doesn’t know whether she does or not. Mikasa can _hear_ the failure in her father’s voice, the self-hatred, the desperation. It hits her like the proverbial slap in the face. Her father as a boss man is going under. He is not doing well. He has debts and his associates went after Mikasa to exact his debts. He wants to form an alliance with these Russians and Mikasa is the hand grenade pin of the deal. If the Russians keep Mikasa safe until these murder plots can be taken care of, then a certain clan of Japanese gangsters are their allies to death.

Mikasa hangs up and throws the cell phone at Erwin Smith. It hits his chest; he does not flinch. Mikasa has the sinking feeling this was the last time she will ever speak to her beloved father, and she fears it is her fault. It is her fault because she is alive.

Erwin looks at Mikasa with a hard-to-read smile. His eyes are steely-gray in the dim hotel lights. This is a man whose bones are made of resolve, whose veins pump old world honor. His blue tie pin glints as he shifts, fixing the ends of his sleeves. There are tattoos on his knuckles and fingers.

“Your people like to kidnap and sell our women,” he says, in a happy, conversational way that is somehow at the same time very ominous.

Mikasa shrugs and shakes her head. “Not _my_ people,” she argues. “I need a drink.”

Erwin takes out his phone again. He dials. He says to whoever answers, in crisp clear English, “I need you to bring us some sake. One cup. I don’t care, the most expensive sake on the shelf. I’m doing _sakazuki_ with the princess.”

* * *

_Всё, что лучшего в жизни Бог дал нам…_

_All that is best in life that God gave us…_

* * *

 

**vii. {st. petersburg, russia; twenty-five years ago | st. petersburg, russia; two years ago}**

There has been a recent push for suffrage awareness and social care, but the social workers and public systems are too ahead of their time to make a difference yet. Street children do not want to be adopted by the same types of people they’ve run away from—broken, poor, disenfranchised alcoholics and cycles of abuse. They are content to sleep on park benches in layered coats and play the victim at train stations for a handful of coins. They go to video game arcades all night and sleep all day. The clouds of disillusionment and grownup despair have not yet gathered over their eyes; they can still see with the spiritual acuity of those unbroken by political factions and empty economical promises. They are not yet hopeless.

“My aunt was supposed to pick me up here,” Erwin says in a thick, trembling way through his teeth. His hair is nicely combed. He is wearing a sweater vest. He is blinking back the tears. His knees are not scabbed. He does not have the money for a return ticket. He does not know his aunt’s telephone number or address. He is afraid of Hanji at the first glance, but not when she takes his hand.

“Yes, but,” Hanji pulls him away from the turnstiles and tracks, “you’re luckier I found you than if she was here for you, I promise.”

Erwin is from the country. Erwin did not expect much coming to the city. Erwin is mesmerized by the buildings, the river. Hanji pickpockets enough for them to get a real lunch and they picnic on a hill overlooking the bay. A stray dog comes along sniffing for some scraps. Erwin gives it half his sandwich.

“What’s your name?” he asks.

“Hanji.”

She tells him about her drunkard father, her spineless mother, the yellow and green traveler trailer in southern France. She tells him about leaving them, packing up and starting her own journey, hitchhiking all the way here where the gold and the palace and the sunset over the bay captivated her. Erwin looks mortified for a moment—just a moment. She can read it on his face: a Roma girl, hitchhiking, all the way from France! Then Erwin flops down in the grass like he means to make a snow angel without any snow. He covers his eyes and Hanji waits uncomfortably for him to stop crying, but she’s not entirely sure he _is_ crying. He might be laughing.

Hanji lets Erwin name the kittens she saved last week, the kittens some crazy lady meant to drown because she didn’t want them anymore. The kittens stagger around Hanji’s blankets and pillows meowing and suckling on warm fingertips. Hanji lives on the fourth floor of a forgotten apartment building, where pieces of the ceiling sometimes fall in a rain of plaster, and nobody bothers them. No, not just Hanji. Erwin lives here, too.

Erwin is good at pickpocketing.

Erwin is good at manipulating.

Erwin is good at fighting.

Erwin is _good_.

Erwin is nice to snuggle up to at night when it’s cold and they’ve outgrown the blankets and coats, and Erwin doesn’t hesitate to join Hanji in air-drumming and swing-dancing to the music they get on the radio they stole.

Erwin brings home a social worker after a year and says, “Hanji, come on, she’s taking me to find my dad in Krestnikov.”

Full of distrust and begrudging stubbornness, Hanji tries to comb her hair with her fingers and smooth out her good sweater, the one with the cat face on it, and the bow over the heart. She wears her good jeans, the tight ones, the ones without any holes. She even puts her hair in a braid. The social worker says she looks pretty. Hanji scowls around her cigarette.

They take a train all the way to Perm, and a car to Krestnikov.

Erwin remembers exactly where his old house is. He has grown almost a foot in the last year, and he is getting more handsome like a man and less grim like a boy. Hanji waits by the social worker, at the car, off the unpaved road, as Erwin approaches his old house like he is blind. Only a blind man wouldn’t notice the way all the windows have been broken out, how the shutters sag, how the wood is faded and peeling, the grass is overgrown, there is no sound, there is no life, even the curtains are torn.

Erwin’s father is gone.

Whether to a new home or to the grave, there is no sign. Why else would he have sent his son to St. Petersburg, alone and empty-handed?

“Walk around in here with me,” Erwin calls from the crooked porch.

“We need to get going,” the social worker says. She probably has plans to drop them off at a shelter, or an educational colony, or something. A reform school. Jail. A clinic.

Hanji stomps through the tall grass to join Erwin inside the country cottage. It is quaint and rustic and overtaken by weeds, cobwebs, animal droppings. No one has lived here in months, at least half a year, surely. Moss is growing on the small hearth. The television has not been stolen because it’s been broken and a bat is sleeping inside it.

Erwin has plans. Erwin has a shard of glass from a mirror. His pockets are full; he has salvaged what he’s wanted from this place. He grabs Hanji by the wrist and Hanji has the urge to jerk back. She does not. She watches as Erwin cuts a line down her palm. Her skin is too thick; he has to try three times. Same for himself. His fingernails are digging into her wrist. He clasps their hands together, tight, tight, tight, shakes. Hanji’s throat tightens.

Erwin croaks, “‘Blood of the covenant is thicker than water of the womb,’” as their blood becomes one between their fingers and hands. “We will not be forgotten.”

Hanji stains his shirt grabbing him to hug like he is the last thing on earth she will ever get to touch. She hugs him every night like he is the last thing on earth she will ever get to touch, and while she is locked away through 1989 in a colony for beating a man bloody and disfigured, she thinks about the way it feels to hug him as she falls asleep at night.

When Hanji gets out, friends tell her Erwin has gone to America.

He comes back with an epaulette tattooed on his shoulder, and Hanji looks at her lousy coming-of-age thorns and hates herself for leaving him to fend for himself. They meet on a bridge near the cathedral. Erwin gives her flowers. She throws the flowers into the river and says, “You don’t have to forgive me for being gone.”

Erwin turns his hand over, open, to show her the scar that curves like a lifeline through his palm. Their pact.

“I’m going to take care of you now,” he doesn’t have to say, but he does.

Twenty-three years and several more prison tattoos later, and they are like raccoons.

One night far too long ago, before she left the travelers, Hanji saw some raccoons. Wherever the mother went, the babies followed immediately. And they are like that, in a way—brothers are like raccoons. Eyes flashing, guards up. Wherever Erwin goes, they all are sure to follow.

Twenty-three years and several more prison tattoos later, and she is sitting on a pool table in a smoky lounge, humming to herself as she lays a very unfortunate associate’s Tarot spread before him.

“Ohhh,” she sighs, _tsk_ - _tsk_ ing with a tap of the tongue to the back of her teeth. “This is a bad, bad forecast, my friend. Just what on earth do you have in your head for this spread? Hot damn.”

The unfortunate associate is tied to a chair. The rope is grimy; it’s from some old auto garage or another. The lights are low and flies buzz in the back room, trapped in a window.

“The Justice card, huh? Justice here, she brings promises to those who have been good and honest, but for those who’ve been immoral and sneaky… Well, do you believe in the nature of ‘karma,’ my friend?”

The unfortunate associate tries to shake his head, to argue, to sweet talk. He cannot. The gag is deep in his mouth, holding it open so Hanji can inspect which tooth she wants to pull first. Armin, Annie, Erd—they stand guard near the doors. Reiner and Eren are outside playing lookout. From the other room standing sentinel over the few fallen comrades of this unfortunate associate, Berthold sniffles and wipes at his nose.

Hanji frowns, heaves a dramatic sigh. “See, we had a _friend_ , and this friend—he was a very good friend. He brought nothing but good fortune to us. I think you might know who I’m talking about. He was a stout, jolly little man. Liked to drink and play chess. We always let him win at chess. _Your_ friends did some awful things to him and thought we would not find out… That we wouldn’t find out about the secrets you’ve been keeping from us…”

The unfortunate associate is sobbing, drooling, nose running. Hanji fishes in her favorite Hello Kitty handbag for her trusty pair of pliers. “Now, I’m going to guess,” she singsongs, “but when you kicked all his teeth out, you might have started with the incisors. I can start with yours, too! That is, unless you decide to fill me in on these _secrets_.”

Twenty-three years and several more prison tattoos later it’s a stroll in the dark, whistling, moon hanging high above the glittering nightlife of St. Petersburg, this vine-covered manor surrounded by a few tall trees and a stunning view of the bay is the center of the web.

This is not a game. This is a brotherhood.

In a study of the internationalized unofficial consortium, James Finckenauer says, “They’re not carefully structured… They’re loose networks, but they draw on people from a number of different areas.”

And it is true.

Over the years, investigators have tried to discern a “model” of how the brotherhood operates. It starts with the elites—the management, organization, ideology, the enigmatic leader Erwin answers to: _Pixis_. Erwin is the head of the spies, the security, those in charge of the organization running properly, of keeping peace between the organizations and other brotherhoods, of pay-offs and intelligence and important tasks.

The brothers have many irons in the fire. Answering to Erwin and the rest of the St. Petersburg manor is the _support_. Hanji is in charge of a large amount of _support_. Deal negotiation, a theoretical money Laundromat, plans of action, specialized extortion and exaction, hits. Armin is next in line for this position. He’s been training hard.

Interpol and criminologists call the base of the “model” the _working unit_. That is to say, the legwork. The deeds too tedious and mundane for high command. Drug trafficking, perfectly legal construction management (except for the black salaries), money exchange, some credit card, tax, and loan fraud, larceny, gang violence, arms trade. These are the _entry-level jobs_ of the organization, if the metaphor is allowed, small loyal groups and radical followers racketeering, transporting, fencing. And if these small loyal groups and radical followers are suspected of fraud or deceitful activity, security’s brute squad rolls in—Bert, Annie, Reiner, Petra, whoever is on _byki_ duty this time—in their nice black suits and absence of smiles. Sometimes it means a weekend trip to Italy, or Miami, or Budapest.

Some syndicates like to play with human trafficking. Pixis draws the line at pornography and prostitution. Human trafficking is dirty. It is not honorable or just.

There is justice in exaction of blackmail. There is justice in hits on evil men and women. There is justice in protection of the brotherhood at all costs, an interconnected hierarchy from the streets to high government seats.

Twenty-three years later but Hanji still remembers the pain in Erwin’s eyes when he mixed their blood and said, “ _We will not be forgotten_.”

* * *

**end _part the first._ **


	3. blood of the covenant, part deux.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Marine in Jean is vibrating with rusty excitement. The Russians seem pleased with his exceptional marksmanship, his disarming techniques and the clinging knowledge from the Infantry Assaultman Leaders Course. Eren is instantly offended. His face pinches. There is a new glint to his eyes like angry tears. “No,” he seethes, voice scratchy. “If we fucked tonight, I would not make you pay me.” Marco wants to leave. Marco wants to go to Puerto Rico, or Paris. He’ll settle for Paris. He doesn’t know if he can work for anyone other than his family. Levi has found a new god, and Erwin does not forget what the cause is.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so this is a follow-up to a fic prompt from vanillaoverlord on tumblr... there were too many questions left unanswered. i felt the need to answer them. WARNING: this is massively multiship. like, legitimately. not a lot of explicit scenes (except jeanmarco, obvs) but definitely a lot of implications. sometimes more towards deep platonic bonds. sometimes just realism.

**_blood of the covenant, part deux._**

**viii. {st. petersburg, russia; 2100 hours MSK}**

The Marine in Jean is vibrating with rusty excitement.

All right, so maybe it’s more the dorky kid deep inside who grew up playing first-person shooters and survival video games. But there is something primal and gratifying about the way a gun kicks in your hands, and the Russians seem pleased with his exceptional marksmanship, his disarming techniques and the clinging knowledge from the Infantry Assaultman Leaders Course.

Jean is good, but that has always been his problem.

They have gotten their hands on a copy of his file, somehow, some way, and he sits in disturbing comfort and luxury with Marco on the other side of the room as Armin and Annie speak in low clipped voices in the kitchen, and cheers echo from down the hall in the lounge where Eren and the big blond one named Reiner are playing _Assassin’s Creed_ in English. Jean glanced it as they passed. He can hear it. He’s played it.

Hanji flips through the pages of the file, now and again licking her forefinger to make turning easier. “Involuntary separation, huh?” she comments aloud. Her English is so smooth and even, the Russian only bleeds through on certain consonants. Her hair tumbles in luscious waves about her shoulders, she is wearing a satin two-piece pajama set with painted toenails and tattoos descending from the short sleeves. “So you broke your contract. Loss of any future benefits and a stamp of ‘bad conduct discharge.’ What, the Corps just wasn’t as good after boot camp?”

“No, ma’am,” Jean murmurs. Marco keeps sending him pointed glances, like Jean’s remarkable composure is pressuring him. But what did Marco even expect? If not for the rat back in Los Angeles, it would have been Jean on his own here anyway. “No,” he says again, clearing his throat. “It just…didn’t align with what I’d hoped it would be. It didn’t feel just. It didn’t feel honorable. It felt like a bunch of kids playing toy soldiers.”

“And you never appealed to the Board for Naval Records even though they encouraged you to?”

Jean shrugs. “I met Marco,” he explains, like it makes sense to anyone who isn’t involved.

All eyes swing to Marco. Marco pretends not to notice.

“It’s a tragic love story,” Armin calls from the kitchen. He’s snacking on a peanut butter sandwich as a maid cleans the kitchen. It has always amused Jean how criminal organizations can be so fucking _normal_ as to have maids. Marco’s maid was a second cousin named Esperanza. “How the hell did you fall in with the great-grandson of a Corona, anyway?”

Jean shrugs again. _At a club_ , he answers in his head. _At a club, dancing tight together. Ran into him again at a party house, a drug deal, because that’s what I became after the Corps—another piece of washed-up LA trash and Marco became my king, my sun and my stars._

He’s blushing like this is a meet-the-parents dinner. He never did get one. Just little notes and covert messages, nice things and wads of cash. Like bribes, like peace offerings. Like fattening up the pig for slaughter or a whole family tree of sugardaddies.

All right, so Marco’s mother had taken him out to dinner—once, just once, and only him—not so long ago, and it had been the first time Jean had ever spoken to her face to face. “I want a Pink’s dog,” she’d said. “Come with me.” And Jean had. And she’d been in a plain tank top and tight jeans, hair in a ponytail, and Jean had been on his best behavior, knowing any stranger on the corner or in cars driving by could be a bodyguard of hers, and they’d sat on the curb in Hollywood eating street food and she’d told him with all the poise and confidence expected of a powerful criminal queen, “You ever make my baby boy cry, and I’ll make you wish I killed you. Did you hear about that poor young man on his way to the World Cup in Brazil? They found him in chunks, buried along the road. You’ll wish _that_ was you by the time I’m done with you, should you ever make my baby boy cry.”

Annie says something to Hanji in rapid-fire Russian. Hanji laughs. Hanji rolls her eyes. Hanji throws Jean’s file down and stands up. She gestures; Armin knows. He hoists himself to the countertops and pulls a bottle of red out of the hanging wine rack near the track lights.

“All right,” Hanji singsongs, “you’re not bad, America. But it’s not up to me to decide your fate.”

“My mother said she discussed a change of plans with you,” Marco cuts in. Hanji grants him a lingering glance. There may be unspoken words that pass in the eye contact; if there are, Jean is not privy to them.

“It is not up to me,” Hanji actually says aloud, soft, and sweet, and apologetic.

Their room, a guest room, is on the third floor. There is a king-sized bed, a television flashing Russian news, a closet so big it could be an adjoining bedroom. Marco stands on the footstool from the divan in the corner and squints at the old gaudy cuckoo clock above the reinforced terrace doors, probably hand-painted and put together in some unimportant village or another.

“There’s a camera in here,” Marco says, pointing to the left eye of the wooden bird in the wooden clock nest.

“Good,” Jean says with a grosgrain sigh, peeling off his pants and his socks and wiggling his toes in fine white carpet.

Eren practically jumps him in the hallway on his way back from the bathroom. The Marine training and the video game ambition kicks in like a trigger; there is something of a struggle if only because Eren is not untrained himself. Jean still triumphs. He lays Eren flat in seven long seconds, an elbow poised at his jugular and Eren’s chest heaving underneath him. Eren’s face is alight. His eyes blaze. He has a hungry look like this is some skewed version of foreplay to him. He was playing footsie with Jean all through dinner, anyway.

“Smooth,” Eren purrs.

“What the fuck is this about?” Jean hisses back in his face. He has been sober since the second hour of the car ride up from Moscow. He’s not entirely sure he doesn’t like it. It has been a while since he has been so clear-thinking, so charged with instinct and insight. It feels good like wrapping up his hands and hitting the bags at the gym when his muscles ache from the luxury of lazing about in his boyfriend’s well-kept condo.

Eren laughs, silently, body moving under Jean’s. Jean is disgusted by the blatant disregard for personal space, the knee propositioning between his legs. He may or may not be a little flustered by it. He never decided Eren was unattractive. He digs his elbow into Eren’s throat enough to be a good warning and Eren’s laugh fades into a look of dark twisted pride, tongue running along his own teeth so sensual Jean cannot define if it’s mockery or not.

“We’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto,” Eren whispers.

Jean has the feeling Eren has only recently seen the movie he quotes.

He also has the feeling Eren is not supposed to be fucking with him, but he is.

He seizes the opening.

“What was all that about earlier at dinner?” he pries.

Anything erotic flies from Eren’s posture; now he is simply pouting. His eyes flash in a new way. “Forget it.”

“No, that’s not fair. What was it about? What did you make me say, by the way?”

“You said, ‘I wanna come on your face.’”

Jean is so blown away, he can only guffaw. “What was the yelling about?” he grills next.

“Internal affairs.” Eren pauses. Jean believes for a moment he is not going to go on. Eren surprises him. He shakes Jean off (mainly because Jean has released him). He lays there on the floor like they’re star-gazing and as Jean hovers on his elbow beside him, Eren finally elaborates: “They think I’m losing it. They think I’m crazy. They think I’m losing my touch. I haven’t been on a job in months. Not even as lookout. They say that I’m unpredictable, that I’m only good for sleeping with. That’s not all there is to me.”

Jean is not sure whether he pities the guy or is basically rubber-necking. “What are you, the resident prostitute or something?”

Eren is instantly offended. His face pinches. There is a new glint to his eyes like angry tears. “No,” he seethes, voice scratchy. “If we fucked tonight, I would not make you pay me.”

Jean blushes.

* * *

_Как люблю я вас, как боюсь я вас,_

_Знать, увидел вас я в недобрый час!_

_How I love you, how I fear you,_

_it seems I met you in an unlucky hour!_

* * *

**ix. {moscow | z** **ürich | st. petersburg, five years ago; rotterdam | st. petersburg, two years ago}**

Things are different now. Thuggish, tattooed _gulag_ veterans have fallen out of style—or maybe even just fallen out of stride—with the classy young besuited criminal-businessmen of the new world. The restrictions on thief ink have become lax. It is no longer something _just_ to earn, but something to prove. It’s a story to be told and a story to uphold.

The winter sun stings Eren’s eyes. The cold bites at his lips, his ears, like desperate kisses from a shelved lover. He shivers deeper into the coat Erwin brought him, hands shoved in the pockets. He sniffles, nose wiggling to one side. The barbed wire rips into the silvery sky. On the other side of this warning wall, around the dilapidated brick, milling about the courtyard, scowling from glassless windows—just yesterday he was there sharing in sullen prison audience. The iron gates of Butyrka scream for the agony of all the souls within but Eren is outside, Eren climbs into a car with Erwin Smith, the world on this side of the brick and wardens practically hums like the chorus of a classical Requiem Mass.

Eren cannot wait to grow his hair back out.

Seated comfortably in the back of the car, Erwin discards a pair of old cracked glasses and transforms from psychiatrist to brother. There is no time to rejoice. At his throat is the shining blue tie pin Eren remembers like a rook to silver. It is time for business as the car jolts off and away from the prison facility.

“It’s been a while, _love_.”

“I was told if I wanted something stolen, I should talk to Moscow’s Robin Hood,” Erwin says in a flat, albeit succoring way.

Eren is fidgety. He wants to crack the tinted windows and see where they are going. He knows better. The ink on his chest is itchy; it’s fresh. In a raspy voice, he surmises, “You asked around for me and found out where I was.”

“You’re right. When I heard where you were, I had to get you released.”

“You fucking told them I learned my lesson and didn’t need to finish my sentence, eh?”

“I have friends in high places. They owed me one.”

“So what do I owe _you_ , then? For getting me out?”

They are en route to Zürich.

The _Stiftung Sammlung E. G. Bührle_ houses sculptures, Old Masters work, Impressionist treasures. It is surprisingly easy to break into for an art museum with such relics. In the lavender shadows of sunrise, they stand studying the Cézanne. Eren wants to touch it. He refrains. He whispers, “This boy in the red vest is like me,” and he doesn’t know what he means at all, so he’s thankful Erwin does not press on the matter.

In a nearby warehouse, they fence the art. They ask a relatively low selling price. The money they receive is dirty, but they have plans to take care of it. The point is to get rid of three associates Erwin really does not like. (They are idiots, obviously. Two of the paintings are discovered in their car in a hospital parking lot within a fortnight of the heist. Eren is offended as the master thief responsible.)

“Rembrandt,” the black market dealer purrs, six hours before their train to the Basel station departs. “Six million euros.”

It is Rembrandt’s only known seascape. It is dark in color and haunting in nature. The composition is perfectly balanced. It is one of thirteen pieces stolen from a Boston museum in 1990, and Eren looks to Erwin and admires how the stormy blue of his eyes matches the stormy blue of the painting. The thirteen stolen pieces were sold in New England by a high member of the Bratva. Erwin has been trying for years to get his hands on the Rembrandt, he’d explained on the way. Eren is tired from the Zürich steal; he wants to find a hostel and crash in a bed even if it reeks of tourist sweat and cigarette smoke. He cannot. He is standing in his long coat like a miniature of Erwin Smith, his savior, and their breath makes little clouds on the air as they speak to the black market dealer.

“Two,” Erwin haggles.

“Four,” the dealer snarls.

Erwin gestures to Eren. “He’ll change your mind.”

Erwin wants the Rembrandt. Eren understands that. He is a little resentful but he knows how the world works. Rather, he has learned how to work the world. In a hostel where the bed reeks of tourist sweat and cigarette smoke, he rides the black market dealer like the American cowboys in the black-and-white Western films. The dealer says, “Two million.” They pay him. Erwin passes Eren a handgun. Eren looks at it for a moment, runs his fingers along the silencer. He points and shoots. The dealer dies with a look on his face that screams of putting two-and-two together altogether too late.

“I stole this Rembrandt nineteen years ago,” Erwin whispers indulgently, stroking the painting like a long-lost lover before they wrap it and put it in the Louis Vuitton carrying case. Funny, how everything connects in the end in some way.

Eren feels himself utterly _cave_ for Erwin then, with that confession, and it’s something like falling in love but more like feeling Christ for the first time, crying under the Theotokos and prayer candles in a church that shimmers gold and silver like Christmas night.

He sleeps not in a bed that reeks of tourist sweat and cigarette smoke, but in a posh velvet-lined sleeper car rattling through Germany, Poland, Belarus, Belorusskaya to Moskovsky, which leaves Eren dizzy.

He has never been to St. Petersburg before.

“What am I to you now?” Eren husks, voice scratchy from sleeping with his mouth open. He knows better than to hold Erwin’s hand like a child, although he longs to.

Erwin says nothing.

Eren hangs the Rembrandt for Erwin in the red room of the St. Petersburg manor.

“Who the fuck do you think you are?” comes a voice from behind him. Eren knows it’s Levi because he’s already met all the others, and it tickles him because he’s still asking the same question.

Levi is in the doorway. He is wearing a black Borrelli dress shirt, halfway undone from the throat, and even blacker boxer briefs. He is smoking a cigarette, nursing a lowball of alcohol. He is beautiful like a devil on the shoulder.

Eren does not have a chance to reply before Levi sneers, “ _Shestyorka_ ,” and it drips like the worst obscenity in the world from his lower lip.

Eren knows better than to be snide, but his tongue moves faster than his mind sometimes. His eyes flicker Levi head to toe. He is quite obviously _something_ to Erwin. “Are you jealous?”

“Take your sweater off.”

Eren takes his sweater off and stands proudly in the center of the red room, filled with elegant furnishings and antiques, as Levi circles him like a hawk to examine his tattoos. He is reading the story of Eren’s life like it is inked on his skin. It is, all things considered, inked on his skin.

Levi stops near the window and takes a long, meditative swallow of his drink. Eren knows by the glint in his cool eyes that Levi could kill him with no consequences right now if he felt so inclined.

“Where are you from?”

“Yekaterinburg,” Eren obediently replies. He wore cute socks in Yekaterinburg. He cooked black tar in a spoon in Yekaterinburg, spit blood and come in Yekaterinburg. He saw passports from all over in Yekaterinburg. Erwin Smith sang hymns to him after he fucked him in Yekaterinburg. A rich man from Greece cracked his ribs and he left Yekaterinburg with a conviction of _privileged murder exceeding a reasonable level of self-defense_.

“You sold sex and caricatures of love in Yekaterinburg,” Levi summarizes, like acid between his teeth. He seems to be particularly bothered by the idea of Erwin visiting a brothel in Yekaterinburg. “You killed the man?” He means the reason for self-defense.

Eren nods. “I thought it might be like cracking an egg on a pan, beating a man’s head against the floor. It isn’t. It’s somehow more sad and disappointing than that.”

Levi smokes quietly for a moment. “And you served how long for that?”

“Two years in an educational colony. I peeled potatoes, a sewed sacks, I set the table, I watched films on the life of Jesus.”

“And after?”

“I worked at a flower shop in Moscow. They called me Robin Hood.”

“Did you steal from foreigners or locals?”

“Anyone stupid enough to take me home. Anyone smart enough to seek Robin Hood out.”

“What were you in Butyrka for?” Levi already knows. He wants to hear it from Eren. He is testing Eren.

“I got caught. Gunther gave me the rose with thorns and said, ‘Happy birthday, _malysh_.’”

Levi circles him again. He throws his sweater at him. It lands on his head. Eren claws it back down and looks to Levi. “You have stars on your knees,” he points out. He does not point out the other tattoos he can see and define—the skulls, the daggers, the cupolas peeking out of the open shirt. Six onion domes. Six years, Levi served. Maybe more, but six he’s willing to advertise.

“I fall to my knees for no man,” Levi confirms the stars.

“I’ll get on my knees for _you_ ,” Eren hums provocatively.

Levi snorts. His fingers curl on Eren’s throat. Eren, for a very short moment, cannot breathe. “Don’t get too comfortable here, _shestyorka_.”

“Stop calling me that.”

Eren can see that Levi has the holy mother and child on his chest, just like he does. He wonders if Levi got it for protection, too.

At least according to a Wikipedia article or two, _Shestyorka_ in the brotherhood is a thief in training. They are the lowest rank, like a deck of cards. They are either castaways or earning their spot. More often than not, they are dispensable. They are the dirty deeds. Sometimes they are assigned like special knaves to brigadiers, _avtorityets_ , or the _Boyeviks_ who work for authorities like Pixis—young handsome smart suit-clad _Boyeviks_ like Erwin Smith, for example.

Eren just likes to think of himself as _Shestyorka_ in the most literal sense: _number six_ , _the sixth_. Erwin is the first, under Pixis; Hanji is the second and Erwin’s right-hand man, the deal-maker, the exaction artist, the one no one will expect to pull a pair of pliers from between her breasts, cross her legs gracefully atop the table, bat her pretty thick lashes and coo, “Now, which shall we play with first, your toenails or your fingernails…” Levi is third and he is Erwin’s left-hand man, a contract killer like Armin. Petra is the prettiest extortion artist a man would ever meet.

And Eren—Eren is the sixth in line. Eren is a more valuable asset to Erwin than the brute squad, cold meticulous Annie, callous Reiner, wiry Bert. Eren negotiates. Eren gathers intelligence in his own special way. Mostly he is lookout. Now and again, he is allowed to accompany Armin—breaking into office buildings and starting gunfights in panel-lined halls to secure some important item or another, cutting wires to gated apartment buildings to carry out a hit. He really likes when he gets to steal things. Erwin’s associates scoff and sneer when he says proudly, “I am the _shestyorka_.” They say, “You’re everyone’s bitch, then?” But when Armin pins one of their hands to the table with a little engraved knife, Eren laughs and says, “No, I’m just the sixth.”

The same year that the Cézanne is recovered in Serbia, Eren and a distant associate named Radu break into Rotterdam’s Kunsthal. It is the witching hour. The alarm does not trip; they work well together and have worked well together for the last four years. The alarm only goes off when they are long-gone. Radu wants to keep the paintings. He’s been more and more of a loose cannon lately. Under the starry sky arcing past the Netherlands, Eren knocks him down, pins him there with a foot to his shoulder, chips his tooth when he shoves his gun in his mouth and growls, “You may keep the other two, but I am buying Monet’s ‘Waterloo’ and the Matisse off of you, and this is a fact.”

It was all sort of a set-up, anyway. They needed to clean some cash. (Radu will later confess to his involvement in the theft and his mother will prove the source of his imbecility after burning the fucking evidence, but this is all beside the point.)  

“He isn’t going to love you because you brought art back to him,” Levi scoffs at Monet’s _Waterloo_ , which Eren is trying very hard to center over the cream-colored sofa set in the lounge. Levi watches from the kitchen. He is wearing a black V-neck T-shirt and charcoal-gray slacks too long for his slight build. They fall in delicate folds at the tops of his bare feet.

Eren doesn’t reply. Eren knows Levi will be singing sweeter songs if he visits him in his room later. Eren doesn’t need Erwin to love him; he just needs Erwin to believe he is still relevant even after all these years.

“Brat,” Levi sighs, looking for something to eat.

“You love me,” Eren parries with a wink over his shoulder.

* * *

**x. {st. petersburg, russia; two years ago | moscow, russia; twelve years ago}**

Levi does love Eren, unfortunately.

He realizes this late one night after three years of hating him.

He finds him tangled in Erwin’s sheets like Ganymede in the folds of Zeus’s lap. He is asleep, he is precious and soft and looks like the years have been kinder to him than they truly have. His hair is a laurel of rich chestnut brown. His brow is, for once, without pretense or suggestion. His lips are parted, pouty, petal pink, and his fingers nest limply in his palm.

Levi does not, to this day, know what comes over him in that moment.

He just… _falls_.

He is livid that Eren is half-naked in Erwin’s bed; he knows what it means. He is well aware of the connotations here, the history. Erwin is preoccupied. Erwin is at a midnight meeting with Pixis. Levi has _fallen_ and it is an ache cutting through him, carving into him, searing flesh and branding bone. He crosses the master bedroom in three long strides and in the spill of moonlight from the open balcony doors, nighttime air swooping in on a summer breeze, Levi stoops to cup a hand under Eren’s chin and press their mouths together in a tender kiss.

Eren is a young man raised in a pleasure house. He is a sylph who works in the shadows, in the senses, in the sins and the dirty secrets. He is everyone’s favorite and that is not necessarily a good thing. Mikasa will die for him; Armin will sacrifice himself for him; Erwin will bend too many rules and Hanji will hold him to her bosom like a mother. He is damn handy with a double-action, he winks after a hit, his laughter is contagious as is his dimpled smile, he has the most unique lookout whistle a man’s ever heard, he is soft and fever hot and his cheek twitches lightly under Levi’s fingertips. He breathes in sharply; he stirs. His lashes flutter and they tickle Levi’s skin.

Eren jerks awake and jerks away. Tumbling off the opposite side of Erwin’s bed, white sheet billowing like a regal cloak as he clutches it closed at his throat, he is looking at Levi with cold groggy uncertainty but he does not seem _scared_. Violated, perhaps, which feels ironic, but not _scared_.

“Levi,” he greets, and finally the sense of shame reaches him. He blushes pink as a rose and Levi understands he is keenly away of the awkward situation at hand: Levi, finding Eren in questionable nakedness in Erwin’s sheets. 

Levi moves around the side of the bed. With tented fingertips he touches Eren’s bare chest, circles his nipples, follows the lines of the tattoos there. He whispers, “I want to know what’s so special about you,” and Eren gives way under his touch. He shudders, he moans like a helpless kitten, he drapes his sheet-covered arms around Levi’s shoulders and crumbles into another kiss. This one, full of teeth and tongue and despair. Despair tastes like cigarettes and metal on Eren’s teeth. Lust is an electric zap at the tip of the tongue, shooting sparks through Levi’s nerves.

He knows Eren is probably only an hour or two flaccid, but he doesn’t care. He doesn’t care if he’s sore or spent. He follows him back down onto Erwin’s bed and lets his fingers swirl between his hips. Eren’s body does the dance of delight; he is swelling at the front of his boxer briefs, under Levi’s groping, massaging hand. His toes curl against Levi’s ankles. His knees sag apart. Levi leaves love bites on his neck and throat and Eren is already close to groaning his name.

“ _Love me_ ,” Eren demands instead.

Like with Erwin, Levi doesn’t really have any other choice.

Like with Erwin in the shadows of Butyrka, Levi is helpless to the passion, the need, the madness poets and philosophers call _love_. He is Eros’s bitch; he is desperate to ease the heartache that sets in when his soul finally rolls over and he is stricken by _desire_.

He has never desired a man or woman without desiring them in their entirety, their body, their heart, the look in their eyes. As a younger man, he used to think this a curse. He believes it now to be a blessing. He can count his loves on one hand, five fingers. And he bears his lovers like Roman nails.

In Moscow’s Butyrskaya in 2002, there is a needle in every cell. The tattoo guns are electric razors, guitar strings, ballpoint pens. There is iron, courtyards, more iron, soldiers. There are tens to the vault-like chambers. The guards do not come even when prisoners band together like good Samaritans, rattling the bars, screaming for help, as a fellow criminal with a chronic heart condition struggles to breathe through chest pain on the lower bunk.

They are not people. They are numbers in a penitentiary.

A single naked electric bulb burns day and night from the ceiling. Bedbugs nest in the walls. It reeks of moldy stone walls and desolation. Levi can tell sunrise from sundown by the slivers of pink and violet that bleed through the space between iron bars and rotten boards that mask the mockery of a window.

It is a world of constant suspense. Every so often, prisoners are roused and moved from cell to cell like a game of _Sorry_. Once a month there is another dry bath. Levi has the misfortune to be a subject of _special interest_ for the first few months. The interrogations leave him black and blue and hardened on the inside, all the molten rage crystallizing into hostile caverns in his soul. _Who do you work for?_ No one. _Who do you work for?_ Myself. _Who do you work for?_ God or the Devil, take your pick.

There is, infallibly, one man in each cell who rats on everything the others say. The sense of community is therefore always at risk. There is also inevitably one man who does not sleep, just paces, muttering to himself, in restrained hysterics. They count each other’s tattoos from across the catacomb. It is speaking without words, thank God.

The third cell Levi is so blessed to inhabit is No. 61, with two other men. There is no hot water. There is, however, a radio. While the man with a dark dirty beard is asleep down below, the blond man with eyes like a clear winter sky swings up to Levi’s bunk with the radio hugged to his chest. He says, “My name is Erwin.”

“I don’t fucking care,” Levi spits back.

“You have a scar on your eyebrow.”

“Turn that shit down, they’ll kick our asses.”

Erwin turns the radio down. It is soothing, folksy music, like the dance music Levi grew up listening to. He is wagging his foot. He can’t help it. Erwin gestures for Levi to look his way. He points to a similar scar on his temple.

“There is only one man who likes to scar this part of the face,” he whispers, voice honest and smooth. “One of the interrogators in the _osorby korpus_ always aims for the forehead.”

Levi narrows his eyes at this Erwin fellow. Erwin lifts the radio, lifts his brows. He smiles warmly. He dances a little in the pale light of the single bulb, swaying and nodding to the familiar music. He whispers, “What are you here for?”

Levi shrugs. He has a blanket, he has his own bed, he likes this present living arrangement, he does not require small talk. Still he answers resentfully, “I tortured a man.”

The word _tortured_ hangs on the air between them like smoke.

“Who do you work for?” Erwin asks, and Levi has to refrain from kicking him off the side of his bunk if only because Erwin is two times his size, Erwin is beautiful, Erwin is marked like a thief by stars and skulls and an epaulette and Levi knows not to fuck with that. Down his chest, cupolas dance above a grim reaper and a Theotokos scene. He is still adding to the spread, it seems.

“Myself,” Levi grits out, voice thick. “Who do _you_ work for?”

Erwin’s eyes flash. “The forgotten.”

He pesters Levi nightly for weeks. Finally, Levi gives in. He and Erwin lie together on the top bunk listening to the music from the radio, the shouts and curses from neighboring cells. Levi has abstained from pointing out the eyes inked at Erwin’s naked hips for a month now; they either mean he is always prepared, or he has backwards bedroom inclinations. Levi has heard every version of Erwin’s ideology, injustices and philosophies and blood vengeance coiled around a revolutionary’s flame. He has listened appropriately to Erwin’s criminal record. He has even spoken a little—just a little—about his own gang, Farlan, Isabel, his friends and family and the things they’ve done to people. The awful, awful things. The things he does not waste one breath of guilt on.

Levi is no stranger to the hierarchy of prisoners, or the loneliness, whichever it really is at the core, anyway.

He is more appalled by the tenderness with which Erwin stakes his claim.

There is no play of power here, no manipulative mentality. The man with the beard snores beneath them. Erwin’s hand is between his legs. And Levi’s legs open to welcome his crawling fingers.

This man has seen him piss; this man has seen him vomit. This man has listened to him hum and half-sing low and gravelly in the back of his throat as he shaves at the sink in the damp corner. _It’s a pleasure, brothers, just to be alive, hey, with such a leader, you will never lack a drive_ … This man has, perhaps, heard him pray before sleep, and maybe even cry the one time Levi has cried in No. 61. This man Erwin Smith with the _vor v zakone_ tattoos has his hands down the front of his pants now and his hands are pulling, tugging, stroking, squeezing, and Levi has waited too long since his last dismal self-pleasuring session or he is utterly, mindlessly, madly enamored, but either way he comes in Erwin’s fist hot and fast, hips bucking, muscles fluttering, a spasm of love and hate with Erwin’s erection digging into the small of his back, teeth grazing his hard shoulder, finger in his mouth as a string of spittle snaps.

The man with the beard growls obscenities and kicks their bunk from below.

Almost every night for three months, this carries on.

And when the men are roused and shuffled around and rearranged like furniture, Levi knows that the music echoing through the iron and stone and miserable moans is from a cell where a blond man has access to a shitty radio. It is a hymn. It is a lullaby. It is a love song.

They meet again in No. 267. They read the paper together and write letters to loved ones in code.

They kiss again in No. 35. Their cellmate gives Erwin bells and manacles. He has served his time.

In No. 59, they consummate their unofficial, unconventional marriage once more.

Erwin says, “I am being released.”

Levi is swept away by a cold empty wind. “Fuck you.”

Erwin says, “I will be back for you.”

“ _Fuck you_ , motherfucker.”

Erwin grabs him by the throat and with syllable-shaped kisses, he bites out, “I will never let you rot behind bars again. I will get you an early release, and you will work for me.”

Like a Biblical covenant, it is a sign, a promise, an obligation. He has found his new god. Levi clutches tight to this man he’s fallen in love with for the last few breaths before anyone notices in this hell, and then the wardens are there for morning checks. Fuck Erwin Smith. There was once a sense of martyred pride between thieves and brothers, emblazoned in black ink and scars and reputation rituals.

But thanks to fucking Erwin Smith, now all Levi wants is to get out.

* * *

_Вижу траур в вас по душе моей,_

_Вижу пламя в вас я победное:_

_Сожжено на нём сердце бедное._

_I see mourning for my soul in you,_

_I see a triumphant flame in you:_

_A poor heart immolated in it._

* * *

**xi. {yekaterinburg, russia; sixteen years ago | moscow, los angeles; ten years ago}**

Finally after years of hard feelings and denial, Erwin investigates.

In wrinkled police and medical reports, faded death certification, he finds closure with his father. He stands amongst the black leafless trees and slabs of granite, marble, slate, marked and unmarked headstones scattered about Shirokorechenskoye. His father’s headstone is marked. He runs a gloved hand down the sloping side of it, traces the letters with a finger like a child in art class.

It has taken him this many years to connect the dots, from his father’s tattoos to his father’s disappearance to his own tattoos and the fight for the forgotten that seems etched into his every vein, his very blueprint.

According to official paperwork, because every soul is reduced to paperwork in the end, his father was a violent thief involved in multiple human trafficking networks, at least seventeen traceable counts of murder, and double that in assault and theft. Of course these crimes only boiled to the surface at the finish line, dressing up the story and otherwise swept under the rug by higher authorities with far more power than the police. It was after his longest stint wasting away in a pretrial detention center that he changed his name and convinced himself he could retire.

He’d met a woman, apparently, with a blond blue-eyed toddler on her hip, a woman who said, “He’s yours,” and the thief’s philosophy distilled down into its purest state like white silver and mercury. Unfortunately, a thief can never retire. Once a thief, always a thief, and the night before his father sent him to St. Petersburg to stay with his aunt, Erwin knew it was goodbye getting tucked into bed. He had just seen it in his father’s eyes. His father had heard word about his own hit. He wanted so badly for Erwin to get out and forget about him.

Pixis puts a hand on Erwin’s shoulder in the cemetery. He says, “I worked with your father once.”

“Please,” Erwin stresses, half-choking on the winter air as he laughs. “Do _not_ tell me he would be so proud of me.”

 _Do not get forgotten_. _Fight for the forgotten_.

It is a creed.

Erwin does not forget Levi in Butyrskaya. With Hanji, and some strings pulled by Pixis, they arrange for Levi’s early release after the required partial time served. A very powerful roadblock is constructed, figuratively of course, to derail any further plans of interrogation or investigation into his blacker activities. Levi stares Erwin down from his side of the table as the soldiers proceed with the release, stares him down like in his mind he is already in his lap and tasting the inside of his mouth. They fly to Los Angeles, the three of them. All businessmen take vacations, after all. Hanji goes to the bar and in their top-floor hotel room, Erwin whispers sweet nothings against the back of Levi’s neck as Levi’s back arches and he pulls his hair and fucks him against the windows overlooking the sea of Californian lights so hard that Levi chants for more like a prayer.

Sitting together on the floor when Hanji gets back, they cut their palms like they’re children again and make a blood pact.

 _Blood of the covenant is thicker than water of the womb_. 

* * *

 

**xii. {st. petersburg, russia; 0700 hours MSK}**

The manor is a real testament to money and status. There is a second rec room on the lowest level, with bamboo hardwood and a wall of mirrors mirroring a wall of windows, punching bags and weights and mats that bare feet stick and _pop_ on. It’s not very large but it’s something, and Marco watches from the courtyard just outside the wall of windows as the blond one named Armin and the blond girl Annie keep their hand-to-hand tuned. They use Eren to practice. Eren can lay Armin flat. Eren has more issue with Annie.

Fifteen minutes ago, the big blond brute named Reiner poked his head out the patio doors there and called, “Hey! You! Come in here, Marine!”

Marco stays, arms crossed, legs crossed, squinting through the pale autumn sunrise, watching from the little patio table where his coffee’s probably gotten cold by now, scone and eggs half-touched. Mikasa is beside him, drinking tea. They are eating with real silver. His stomach is still in knots. He wishes he could talk to his mother; all he wants is one last piece of advice. He watches Jean attacking the boxing bag with Reiner, eyes following the arc of his hooks, his uppercuts, the way his legs and ass tighten up with a slamming round kick. He runs his hands through his sweaty hair; he laughs with the bodyguard Reiner. They are like bros at the gym. It is terrifying to Marco. Jean is fine here already. Jean is that type of man; he has a leader somewhere in him, waiting to be nurtured. Marco is only good at pretending to be a leader by following example.

A shadow slants across the patio.

It is their boss, Erwin Smith.

Erwin is fresh out of the shower; he looks like a normal man anywhere in the general ballpark of late thirties or early forties, but wearing a casual sweater and plain jeans works well with that. Mikasa looks up at him; he gestures. She leaves. She leaves Marco alone at the table with Erwin the Russian gangster taking her seat and pulling the stainless steel and glass French press his way to pour a steaming cup of coffee.

“This is bone china,” he says in the same chipper tone as _Good morning_. “Hand-painted.” When he smiles at Marco, Marco does not feel deceived. But he has learned over the years that an honest smile is not necessarily a good smile.

“ _Bone_ china?” Marco echoes, poking at his cold poached eggs.

“Not human bone, no. Animal bone.”

“Is that…true?”

“Some vegans refuse to use it.”

Marco laughs at the ridiculousness. “What’s the world come to that we can have people protesting against fine china?”

Erwin sighs, leaning back with a creak of the patio chair. He is tall, and broad; he stretches out his long legs and beseeches the clear gray sky. He says, “‘Sometimes I want to ask God why He allows poverty and famine and injustice when He could do something about it, but I’m afraid He’ll just turn around and ask me the same.’”

Marco picks a corner of scone off and pops it in his mouth. “That’s valid.”

“Oh, I can’t take credit for it. No, it was…the founder of the Bahá’í faith, I believe.”

“I have one.” Marco smiles meekly, feeling the dimples Jean so loves to point out to make him blush. He shifts positions, relaxing a little. He wishes he could look it up on his smart phone, but his smart phone was deactivated and donated to an electronics recycling, lest anyone try to track the son of the LA chapter via GPS or cellular signals. Instead, Marco does his best with paraphrasing, “‘A smart person can’t exist in this world too long before having some anger about the inequality and it’s not a kneejerk liberal bleeding-heart kind of thing, just a normal human reaction to a bullshit set of values where we have cinnamon-flavored floss while people sleep in the streets.’ George Carlin. An American comedian.”

Yes, that is the point breathing down the back of Marco’s neck. That’s the cause; that’s the crux. That’s in the King Manifesto. That’s enlightenment: the fight against prejudice, injustice, inequality, corruption, greed.

Erwin’s narrowed eyes seem to pick all this apart, plucking it right from Marco’s knotted brow and fading smile. Erwin the Russian looks at him long and hard. Slowly, his face softens. His eyes are no longer like shards of ice. They’re more like a rolling sea.

“Yes…” he murmurs. He nods a little to himself. He drinks his coffee. He says, “You have a choice to make, friend.”

Marco’s throat tightens. He’s not sure what the choice is, but he’s been feeling it crawling under his skin since they arrived in Moscow. Jaw tight, his eyes roam the small courtyard again, dancing up the window-walls of the rec room. Eren and Armin are on the bags now with Jean; Reiner’s gone off with Annie. Mikasa is wrapping her hands to join in, hair up, tattoos dancing on slim, tight arms.

Marco wants to leave. Marco wants to go to Puerto Rico, or Paris. He’ll settle for Paris. He doesn’t know if he can work for anyone other than his family.

Marco swallows hard. “I know,” he husks. “You’re going to lay down my options now, aren’t you?”

* * *

_Но не грустен я, не печален я;_

_Утешительна мне судьба моя._

_But I am not sad, I am not sorrowful;_

_my fate is soothing to me._

* * *

**xiii. {st. petersburg, russia; three days later}**

_Blood of the covenant is thicker than water of the womb_.

Outside on the lower patio of the St. Petersburg manor, Marco Bodt the ex-prince of a former chapter of Latin Kings seems just as deeply touched by this psalm, mesmerized as Erwin pulls out the engraved knife and passes it forth as gentlemanly politesse dictates.

“Your mother asked two things of me, in restitution.”

“Restitution for _what_?”

Erwin pities Marco’s denial. He sees the way he white-knuckles the blade. He sighs, ruffles Marco’s hair. He says, like Marco does not already know somewhere buried inside, “There was a rat. The American government came down on your family’s operations. The drugs we sent to you to sell were confiscated, for the most part. They’re dismantling the Kings in the Los Angeles area. Your family is taking it on in full as it comes back around to their irresponsibility. And in restitution, your mother asked of me two things.”

Marco’s hands are shaking with the knife.

“She asked that, should you and your lover start working for us, we treat you as our own,” Erwin goes on. “ _Or_ that, should you not work for us, we protect you at all costs. Realistically, you two _should_ be indentured. We’ve lost a _lot_ of money because of this shit. But I owe it to your mother for arranging nothing gets traced back to us. So I’m giving you the choice you’ve never had.”

There are faint white X’s on Erwin’s palms from the blood handshakes. He steps into the fitness room—Petra is here now, nursing nostalgia at the barre—and asks Eren to fetch a butterfly Band-Aid.

It is only days later that Erwin stands on the drive with a cigarette and another cup of coffee, loose hair dancing in and out of his eyes as he watches the car leave the property. He has already spoken to Pixis. He is, after all, Pixis’s favorite _Boyevik_ ; he found no unnecessary trouble there. The unnecessary trouble is in Annie, who was raised too staunchly in old-school underworld politics to understand. The unnecessary trouble is Eren, who has been complaining all morning he didn’t get to know them well enough yet. The unnecessary trouble is the way Levi casts Hanji a glance of patented censure when Hanji says, “We can always take a trip to Paris.” The way Levi lingers on the portico behind him, picking at some ivy that crowns a stone lion at the steps.

“Why did you lie to them?” Levi condemns.

Erwin shakes his head. “I never lied.”

Levi is firmly convinced otherwise, but Erwin is well accustomed by now to being misunderstood by hypercritical watchers and witnesses. “They’re tied to us, Erwin. They can’t just leave without consequence. We can use them somehow, we’re connected to them forever, and they know it.”

Erwin nods, taking a long sip of his hot drink. He licks his lips. “You’re right, after they’re settled in Paris, we have a connection to the city.”

“I don’t mean like a fucking vacation, Erwin—”

“You’re right, after they’ve settled in Paris, we can branch out even further.”

“You’re not taking me seriously, Erwin—”

“Let them be.” Erwin turns, scrutinizing Levi. He does not like being undermined; he does not like being questioned. Levi remembers this in a flutter of lashes, an uncomfortable break of eye contact. The sky is like a bruise; it is so close to Christmas, it aches in the soul.

“Let them be,” Erwin says again, voice thick and resolute. “Who is it that’s saved your puny ass more times than you should be proud of?”

Begrudgingly, Levi bites out, “You.”

“Who is it that has provided you all with this wonderful home and promise of safety?”

“You—”

“Who is it that saved Hanji from a life on the streets, who spared Petra the murder charges, who gave Armin rebirth from the ashes, who put a sense of self-worth back into a young man broken by the sex trade, who welcomed the daughter of a foreign gangster—”

“You, Erwin. You, you’re our fucking savior. Are you happy with that?”

Erwin nods. He is so close to Levi now, he can taste his skin if he breathes deep enough. He confirms, “Who is it that has always come back for you, my brothers, who has taken you all in and not forgotten about you?”

“We owe you our lives,” Levi concedes, evading Erwin’s righteous eyes. “Those two _Americans_ , they _owe_ us, Erwin. They’ve been erased from the radar. They could disappear and no one would notice.”

“And that’s precisely what they’ve done. We made a pact.”

“That stupid blood thing? Erwin!”

“It is not stupid. It means something.”

“You’re too nice for your own good,” Levi spits, but it is miserable, and pathetic, and dependent. “I have no idea how you are so successful.”

Erwin laughs. He doesn’t mean to spite Levi; it’s a soft, cascading laugh, like they’re sharing good stories around a few drinks and some after-dinner cards. He lets Levi have the last of his cigarette. He ruminates on this for a moment. He wants a good answer but he isn’t quite sure, either. Perhaps luck, perhaps connections, perhaps fate, perhaps skill. There is no single deciding factor, he knows. There is everything in the world waiting to condemn his songs of praise. He is a villain, after all. But perhaps there are no _heroes_ and no _villains_ , no _right_ and no _wrong_ —just two sides of the same story, constantly at war with one another. One man’s savior is another man’s devil; one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.

Levi is looking at him, waiting. His eyes are so full of fear and hate and devotion. Erwin runs a knuckle along the curve of Levi’s lower lip; he will pout until his last day, it seems, old age be damned.

Erwin confesses, “It is because I do not forget.”

* * *

_В жертву отдал я огневым глазам._

_In sacrifice I returned to the fiery eyes.  
_

* * *

**end _the mark of cain/blood of the covenant.  
_**


End file.
